PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Policy
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1666386
This article is part of the Research TopicTuberculosis: Socio-Demographic and Health Systems DisparitiesView all articles
Family caregiving as a pathway to strengthen health outcomes in India
Provisionally accepted
Shirley Du Yan1*
Tanaya Jagtiani1
Poornima Sharma2*Arjun Rangarajan1Bhavana Issar3Madhura Kanjilal4Prachi Deo4Smriti Rana5Seema Murthy2Shahed Alam1
Nachiket Mor6- 1Noora Health, San Francisco, United States
- 2Noora Health India Private Limited, Bangalore, India
- 3Caregiver Saathi Foundation, Haryana, India
- 4Nayi Disha, Hyderabad, India
- 5Pallium India, Kerala, India
- 6Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health, Chennai, India
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Although India's health outcomes have improved, progress can still be made to reduce the health burden from tuberculosis, noncommunicable diseases, and maternal and neonatal health. In order to address challenges such as healthcare workforce shortages or suboptimal time with healthcare workers, health systems can involve family caregivers who are already playing an active, informal role to support patients. Their formal involvement to support patients has been associated with improved health outcomes in health conditions. Formal support for family caregivers aligns with other priority health strategies, such as self-care, universal healthcare, and shifting demographic trends in India. Inspiration can be drawn from existing interventions that support family caregivers: training and education delivered through the public health system, caregiver support groups, community volunteers to support palliative patients, and interventions for specific patient populations (i.e. palliative care or for children with disabilities). For India, though there are no comprehensive policies that finance informal caregiver inclusion, there are examples to draw from globally. Finally, we recommend tenets of how to best engage with family caregivers, which can lead to meaningful caregiver involvement for improved health outcomes: leveraging trusted sources, focusing on actionable skills, providing just-in-time engagement, designing for diverse contexts, and ensuring caregiver safety.
Keywords: Health system strengthening (HSS), Informal care, Family caregiver, LMIC (low and middle income countries), Caregiver support, India
Received: 15 Jul 2025; Accepted: 13 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yan, Jagtiani, Sharma, Rangarajan, Issar, Kanjilal, Deo, Rana, Murthy, Alam and Mor. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Shirley Du Yan, shirley@noorahealth.org
Poornima Sharma, poornima@noorahealth.org
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