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10
Posted by liaison on August 10th, 2026
Posted in: All Members, Partners Sharing Information
Caregiving has come up in many ways with our work at NNLM. We are hearing this theme in our focused outreach work, in classes such as Connecting Older Adults to Health Information, have spotlighted this topic in the NNLM Reading Club, and presented on this topic in conferences. In this blog post, we celebrate the 63 million caregivers in the United States and share resources for and about caregiving.
Caregiving comes in many forms, and you may not even realize that you are a caregiver.
Rosalynn Carter, former First Lady and Founder of the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers, began bringing attention to caregivers more than 5 decades ago. Caregivers are often unseen and unsupported by our current systems, but we will likely all be affected by caregiving at some point in our lives.
“There are only four kinds of people in the world–those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.” -Rosalynn Carter
In April 2026, George Strawley (NNLM Region 4) presented at the Public Library Association Conference on Empowering Libraries to Support Caregivers. This presentation was developed by George, Carolyn Martin (NNLM Region 5) and Bennie Finch (Region 7).
We provided some statistics about caregiving, resources for caregivers, and programming ideas that can support caregivers including some examples from NNLM Region 7 Members. The slides are available for download to review a variety of resources and ideas for supporting caregivers.
The 2025 report from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving called, “Caring in the U.S.” gives us a snapshot about caregivers.
63 million, 1 in 4 adults in the United States are caregivers
This reflects a 50% increase since 2015. The same report states that those receiving care are at all stages of life but are primarily older adults and nearly half of those are 75 or older. Care recipients include family, friends, and relatives across all stages of life. The Top 5 conditions for care are aging, dementia and Alzheimer’s, mobility, cancer, and surgery and wounds. Find resources to support many types of caregiving in the Caregiving Resource List (download) shared as part of the PLA Presentation.
While caregiving can be rewarding it is also linked to stress and health impacts, so it is important for caregivers to have resources they can use to support themselves as they care for others.
MedlinePlus:
Caregiving Toolkit from the National Institute on Aging has a variety of resources from health condition specific information to worksheets, infographics, videos and articles such as Taking Care of Yourself: Tips for Caregivers. Many resources are helpful to any caregiver.
Caregiver Stress, Office of Women’s Health
https://www.aarp.org/pri/topics/ltss/family-caregiving/caregiving-in-the-us-2025/
Strawley, G., Finch, B., Martin, C. (2026, April 3). Empowering Libraries to Support Caregivers [Conference Presentation]. Public Library Association Conference, 2026, April 1-3, Minneapolis, MN.
This post was written by Bennie Finch and originally appeared on NNLM Region 7’s blog.
