The Cost of Caregiving in College: Investigating Cardiometabolic Health Among Emerging Adult Caregivers

Informal family caregiving has become an increasingly common experience in the United States, where approximately one in five adults provides long-term care to a family member, friend, or loved one. While much of the caregiving literature focuses on middle-aged and older adult caregivers, emerging adult (EA) caregivers, particularly college students, are stepping into caregiving roles to fill gaps in formal healthcare and social support systems. Despite this trend, caregiving among EAs remains understudied and largely invisible within developmental and public health research. This study draws upon the Stress-Process Model (Pearlin et al., 1990) to examine how caregiving responsibilities during emerging adulthood are associated with physical health disparities, particularly cardiometabolic outcomes. Leveraging longitudinal data from the ongoing 3E Study (Economic and Educational Contributions to Emerging Adult Cardiometabolic Health), this project seeks to identify differences in cardiometabolic health outcomes (blood pressure, BMI) between caregivers and non-caregivers, assess behavioral mediators (sleep, eating, physical activity), and determine caregiving-specific challenges most strongly associated with worse cardiometabolic health.