New project offers support for caring relatives via WhatsApp

Spending as much time as possible with relatives or acquaintances in need of care and making sure the person is doing well - filling out applications, filing appeals and feeling responsible day and night. This roughly describes the range of demands and feelings that caregiving relatives are confronted with. Their own health often falls by the wayside. Precisely because caregiving relatives have little time for themselves in everyday life, a new approach to health promotion is being tested in the M-Gender project. To this end, the study team from the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology - BIPS and the Institute for Public Health and Care Research (IPP) at the University of Bremen worked intensively with those affected and those involved in practice, such as the Dementia Information and Coordination Center Bremen, and developed a chatbot with offers that works via the messenger service WhatsApp.

"There are already special apps for family caregivers, but we found that they are hardly used. That's why we looked for a communication channel that many caregiving relatives choose anyway, and we ended up with WhatsApp," explains study researcher Emily Mena from the University of Bremen. The chatbot works like a normal contact in WhatsApp, with whom important questions can be discussed: How do I apply for a care degree? How do I deal with challenging situations such as aggressiveness on the part of the cared-for person? How can I learn to take care of my health despite the responsibility for others and allow myself some time off? Users of the chatbot receive a daily message or video on these and many other topics.

A special feature of the chatbot is that the information is available not only in German but also in Turkish. Filling out forms correctly is already difficult for many people whose language of origin is German. For people with a different language of origin, this is even more difficult. The large amount of available information on support services also represents a hurdle for many - up to now, it has hardly been available in bundled form in German, and even less so in Turkish. Here, the chatbot offers a targeted selection of quality-checked information, care training, and health promotion exercises. These can provide users with brief impulses and valuable tips on self-care as well as concrete support around informal care.

Gender equity is another central theme of the M-Gender project, which is funded by the SHI Alliance for Health. "The fact that women provide care far more frequently and intensively than men is too rarely named and acknowledged. This not only has direct effects on their health, but also indirect effects through financial burdens and loss of income," explains study researcher Hande Gencer from BIPS. "However, the PflegeBot is aimed at people of any gender. After all, the needs and requirements of caregivers are cross-gender." The study team wants to find out whether the PflegeBot is experienced equally as acceptable and helpful by people of different genders and makes a contribution to health promotion.

Caregivers who want to take part in the study and test the WhatsApp chatbot free of charge in German or Turkish can register on the project's website until the end of 2023 and get started easily. Or contact the study team by phone (0176 41738566) or email (m-gender(@)leibniz-bips.de).
 

BIPS - Health research in the service of people
The population is at the center of our research. As an epidemiological research institute, we see our task as identifying causes of health disorders and developing new concepts for disease prevention. Our research provides the basis for social decisions. It informs the population about health risks and contributes to a healthy living environment.

BIPS is a member of the Leibniz Association, which comprises 97 independent research institutes. The orientation of the Leibniz institutes ranges from the natural, engineering and environmental sciences to economics, spatial and social sciences and the humanities. Leibniz Institutes are dedicated to socially, economically and ecologically relevant issues. Due to their national importance, the federal and state governments jointly fund the institutes of the Leibniz Association. The Leibniz institutes employ around 20,000 people, including 10,000 scientists. The total budget of the institutes is more than 1.9 billion euros.