Morbidities among older workers and work exit: The HEAF cohort
Morbidities among older workers and work exit: The HEAF cohort
Background: Governments need people to work to older ages but the prevalence of chronic disease and comorbidity increases with age and impacts work ability.
Aims: To investigate the effects of objective health diagnoses on exit from paid work amongst older workers.
Methods: Health and Employment After Fifty (HEAF) is a population cohort of adults aged 50-64 years recruited from English GP practices which contribute to the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD). Participants have completed questionnaires about health and work at baseline and annually for 2-years: their responses were linked with their objective health diagnoses from the CPRD and data analysed using Cox regression.
Results: Of 4888 HEAF participants ever in paid work, 580 (25%) men and 642(25%) women exited employment, 277 of them mainly or partly for a health reason (HRJL). Amongst HEAF participants who remained in work (n=3666) or who exited work but not for health reasons (n=945), there was a similar prevalence of background health conditions. In men and women, HRJL was associated with inflammatory arthritis, sleep disorders, common mental health conditions and musculoskeletal pain. There were however gender differences: widespread pain and lower limb osteoarthritis were associated with HRJL in women but hypertension and cardiovascular disease in men.
Conclusions: Improved diagnosis and management of common conditions might be expected to increase working lives. Workplace wellbeing interventions targeting obesity and increasing mobility might contribute to extended working lives. Employers of predominantly female, as compared with male workforces may need different strategies to retain older workers.
470-477
Walker-Bone, Karen
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D'angelo, Stefania
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Linaker, Catherine
6c6d1b90-ee40-4c96-8b2e-b06efbe030ae
Stevens, Martin J
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Ntani, Georgia
9b009e0a-5ab2-4c6e-a9fd-15a601e92be5
Cooper, Cyrus
e05f5612-b493-4273-9b71-9e0ce32bdad6
Syddall, Holly Emma
a0181a93-8fc3-4998-a996-7963f0128328
Walker-Bone, Karen
ad7d1336-ed2c-4f39-ade5-da84eb412109
D'angelo, Stefania
13375ecd-1117-4b6e-99c0-32239f52eed6
Linaker, Catherine
6c6d1b90-ee40-4c96-8b2e-b06efbe030ae
Stevens, Martin J
6ed230b2-7eaa-478b-80f7-ea75234bb76f
Ntani, Georgia
9b009e0a-5ab2-4c6e-a9fd-15a601e92be5
Cooper, Cyrus
e05f5612-b493-4273-9b71-9e0ce32bdad6
Syddall, Holly Emma
a0181a93-8fc3-4998-a996-7963f0128328
Walker-Bone, Karen, D'angelo, Stefania, Linaker, Catherine, Stevens, Martin J, Ntani, Georgia, Cooper, Cyrus and Syddall, Holly Emma
(2022)
Morbidities among older workers and work exit: The HEAF cohort.
Occupational Medicine, 72 (7), .
(doi:10.1093/occmed/kqac068).
Abstract
Background: Governments need people to work to older ages but the prevalence of chronic disease and comorbidity increases with age and impacts work ability.
Aims: To investigate the effects of objective health diagnoses on exit from paid work amongst older workers.
Methods: Health and Employment After Fifty (HEAF) is a population cohort of adults aged 50-64 years recruited from English GP practices which contribute to the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD). Participants have completed questionnaires about health and work at baseline and annually for 2-years: their responses were linked with their objective health diagnoses from the CPRD and data analysed using Cox regression.
Results: Of 4888 HEAF participants ever in paid work, 580 (25%) men and 642(25%) women exited employment, 277 of them mainly or partly for a health reason (HRJL). Amongst HEAF participants who remained in work (n=3666) or who exited work but not for health reasons (n=945), there was a similar prevalence of background health conditions. In men and women, HRJL was associated with inflammatory arthritis, sleep disorders, common mental health conditions and musculoskeletal pain. There were however gender differences: widespread pain and lower limb osteoarthritis were associated with HRJL in women but hypertension and cardiovascular disease in men.
Conclusions: Improved diagnosis and management of common conditions might be expected to increase working lives. Workplace wellbeing interventions targeting obesity and increasing mobility might contribute to extended working lives. Employers of predominantly female, as compared with male workforces may need different strategies to retain older workers.
Text
22-OP-035-Revised paper ( 3000 words clean)24.5.22
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 9 June 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 29 July 2022
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 467366
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/467366
ISSN: 0962-7480
PURE UUID: 41a8779d-7bd8-4504-8579-3ad444f044ac
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Date deposited: 07 Jul 2022 16:57
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 05:10
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Author:
Stefania D'angelo
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