Cleo’s Family Health IndexTM — a unique measure of seven dimensions of family health — provides a detailed view of the state of working parents and caregivers. Its initial findings reveal that most parents and family caregivers are isolated in their care journey leading to a strain on their emotional and physical wellbeing that impacts their overall health and engagement in the workforce.
Beyond providing insight on the wellbeing of caregivers and their families at scale, the Family Health Index equips Cleo to identify individual parents and caregivers at greater risk of burnout and in most urgent need of intervention. It is a multidimensional, robust tool for tracking members’ health and wellbeing in order to provide targeted recommendations for the next best actions to improve their care.
Cleo’s Family Health Index at a glance
- Measures seven dimensions of family health: confidence, caregiver burden, self-care, general health, mental health, connectedness, and family support.
- Allows Cleo to identify members with high levels of risk and track over time each of these dimensions and directly engage them before suffering the consequences of burnout which can include:
- Physical (e.g., increase risk for diabetes, cardiovascular disease),
- Psychological (e.g., insomnia, depression), and
- Occupational (e.g., absenteeism, disability leave).
The state of family health
Inaugural Family Health Index data is based on a survey of 950 parents and caregivers including both Cleo members and non-members. The study demonstrated that:
- 72% of parents are feeling burdened from parenting and caregiving
- 42% of parents and caregivers are feeling isolated
- 50% of parents and caregivers lost at least 1 day of work over the last month due to caregiving
Essential to the Family Health Index will be continuous data collection through follow-on surveys and ongoing check-ins and assessments designed to monitor health and wellbeing and inform members’ care.
Harnessing data to improve family health
With the Family Health Index Cleo now has the ability to measure and track the overall health and wellbeing of the parents and caregivers we support. This enables us to identify members at greater risk of burnout and its consequences, and intervene to improve outcomes.
“We need to move from addressing the house on fire problem of caregivers to a proactive model of supporting them before the fire is burning. Supporting the holistic needs of working families is critical to the diversity, retention, and overall success of our workforce and businesses – and we have to move beyond narrow views of our working families which we typically see in only our claims data when it’s too late to intervene. The FHI is a huge leap forward, giving us and our clients a broader view of what’s truly going on in the lives of our working families and thus, allowing us to make targeted interventions and investments to shore them up and improve their health and wellbeing.” Cleo CEO, Sarahjane Sacchetti
UCSF Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and Cleo’s Clinical Advisor, Dr. Seth Bokser, shares his view on Cleo’s Family Health Index “As a pediatrician, all of my patients – from well babies to children with chronic disease – are almost entirely dependent on caregivers to thrive. A family’s sense of wellness or FHI embraces the multidimensional nature of health. In a snapshot, the FHI can help us celebrate our families’ strengths and show us where our caregivers need tangible and measurable support.”
Cleo’s Family Health Index also shows that parents and caregivers whose company supports them in their caregiving journey are more likely to score higher (i.e. better), further corroborating that as employees receive family support, their overall health and wellbeing are impacted positively.