Unsung Heroes of Caregiving during End-of-life care: A Narrative Review Exploring Race and Religiosity impacts on Informal Caregivers in African American Communities

Introduction: Relatives and family friends take on informal caregiving responsibilities due to the various financial limitations of federal and private insurance companies. Informal caregivers take on the responsibility of decision-making regarding the outcomes concerning symptom management, family support, individualized care, coordination, service utilization, and finances. The responsibility of caring for the terminally ill can lead to emotional and traumatic experiences for informal caregivers. This narrative review aims to explore how race and religiosity impact informal caregivers in African American (AA) communities during end-of-life care. Methods: For this narrative review PubMed and Google Scholar have been utilized to search articles from 2005 through 2022. Search terms included end-of-life, death, AA, caregiver burden, informal caregiver, home nursing, religion, and religious coping. Inclusion criteria included peer-reviewed articles discussing terminally ill AA patients 65 years and older. A total of 397 articles were identified. 23 articles met inclusion criteria and were evaluated for this study. Results: Results showed that due to financial implications, most AA families take on informal caregiving, particularly for dementia, HIV/AIDS, and cancer. Religious coping—the practices and beliefs associated with faith, religion, and death significantly impacted AA informal caregivers’ mental health, particularly self-reported anxiety and depression. Conclusion: Various racial and socioeconomic disparities may explain differences in end-of-life care in AA communities. Such factors contribute to poor quality of care for patients and financial burdens for informal caregivers, which can lead to poor mental health.https://medica-musc.researchcommons.org/posters/1020/thumbnail.jp