A powerful tool to measure and improve the health of working families: Cleo’s Family Health Index

Cleo’s Family Health Index^TM — 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

Our proprietary measures of caregiver health measures seven dimensions of family health: confidence, caregiver burden, self-care, general health, mental health/emotional wellness, connectedness, and family support.

By quantitatively measuring these dimensions, Cleo can identify members with high levels of risk for burnout, directly engage them before suffering the consequences of burnout, and track changes over time.

“Burnout” often is used as a general catch-all expression for worker fatigue. But it’s much more than that. The definition for “burnout” that Cleo uses is a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion that negatively impacts one’s ability to show up for themselves, for work, or for others.

Burnout can include physical health effects, such as increased risk for diabetes or cardiovascular disease, emotional or psychological effects, such as insomnia or depression, and occupational effects, such as absenteeism or disability leave.

Essential to the Family Health Index is continuous data collection through follow-on surveys and ongoing check-ins and assessments designed to monitor health and wellbeing and inform members’ care.

What the Family Health Index measures

Confidence: Confidence in one’s abilities to plan for and care for one’s family and self as well as feel confident in one’s ability to get support for one’s family and self.

Burden: Perception and feeling of strain or health deterioration as a result of caregiving, as well as having the ability to make enough time for one’s self.

Self-Care: Ability to care for oneself with respect to getting enough sleep, enjoying activities outside of work and caregiving, physical activity and eating a healthy diet.

General Health: Self-reported rating of one’s personal health and trend relative to a year ago

Mental Health/Emotional Wellness: Screened for depression and anxiety with the PHQ-4.

Connectedness: Participation in social activities vs. feelings of isolation/loneliness as a result of their caregiving responsibilities.

Family Support: Sense of support from one’s family members and resilience to collectively adapt to changes and make healthy lifestyle changes with their family

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.

 
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.