| 1. |
- Berg, Noora, et al.
(author)
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Risk factors in adolescence as predictors of trajectories of somatic symptoms over 27 years
- 2022
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In: European Journal of Public Health. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1101-1262 .- 1464-360X. ; 32:5, s. 696-702
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: Somatic symptoms among adolescents are common, yet little is known about long-term trajectories of somatic symptoms and the factors in adolescence that shape them. We examined individual, family and schoolbased factors at age 16 as predictors of trajectories of somatic symptoms over 27 years. Methods: Participants from the Northern Swedish Cohort (n ¼ 1001) responded to questions about individual factors (e.g. health behaviours), family factors (e.g. contact with parents, social and material adversity) and school satisfaction at age 16; as well as 10 somatic symptoms at ages 16, 18, 21, 30 and 43. Teacher assessments at age 16 included overall ability at school and peer relations. Age 16 predictors of somatic symptom trajectory group membership were analysed using multinomial logistic regression. Results: Poor contact with mother and poor school satisfaction were significant predictors of adverse symptom trajectories among both men and women. Low birth weight and low parental academic involvement were contributing factors for women, while smoking and social adversity were more relevant factors for men. Conclusions: Our findings emphasize the importance of a holistic approach that considers the unique contributions of individual, family and school-based factors in the development of trajectories of somatic symptoms from adolescence to middle age.
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| 2. |
- Berthelsen, Hanne, Odont.Dr. MPH, Docent i ledarskap och organisation, et al.
(author)
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Leadership, work environment and caries prevention - what is good for the staff, is also good for the patients
- 2023
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In: Acta Odontologica Scandinavica. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 0001-6357 .- 1502-3850. ; 81:3, s. 196-201
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Objectives: Dental caries is a health problem that can be prevented. The aim of this study is to analyse if the quality of leadership, in Swedish Public Dental Health clinics, influences the extent to which patients with caries receive preventive care, and if any such effect is mediated through a collaborative work climate, clear role expectations and a low average level of burnout among staff.Methods: The multilevel cross-sectional design includes work environment data from surveys of 75 general public dental clinics, register-based data on preventive measures provided to 5398 patients who received a dental filling due to a caries diagnosis, and patient demographics. Using a multilevel path analysis with logistic regression, we tested a model with one direct and three indirect pathways, controlling for the potential confounding effect of patient demographic factors.Results: Leadership quality, as assessed by the staff at the clinic, was associated with increased odds of patients with caries receiving prevention, controlling for patient demographic factors. Leadership quality was also positively related to a collaborative work climate, clear role expectations and a low average level of burnout among staff. Against expectations, however, no indirect effect from leadership quality on prevention through the other work environment factors was found.Conclusions: In conclusion, the quality of leadership in Swedish Public Dental Health clinics was positively related to a good work environment for staff and to delivery of preventive care to patients experiencing caries.
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| 3. |
- Blomqvist, Sandra, 1985-, et al.
(author)
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Associations between COVID-19-related changes in the psychosocial work environment and mental health
- 2023
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In: Scandinavian Journal of Public Health. - : Sage Publications. - 1403-4948 .- 1651-1905. ; 51:5, s. 664-672
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: Individuals' lives have been substantially affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to describe changes in psychosocial work environment and mental health and to investigate associations between job insecurity and mental ill-health in relation to changes in other psychosocial work factors, loneliness and financial worries.Methods: A sub-sample of individuals from the eighth Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health answered a web-based survey in early 2021 about current and pandemic-related changes in health, health behaviours, work and private life. We investigated participants working before the pandemic (N=1231) in relation to standardised measures on depression, anxiety and loneliness, together with psychosocial work factors, in descriptive and logistic regression analyses.Results: While 9% reached the clinical threshold for depression and 6% for anxiety, more than a third felt more worried, lonelier or in a low mood since the start of the pandemic. Two per cent had been dismissed from their jobs, but 16% experienced workplace downsizings. Conditioning on socio-demographic factors and prior mental-health problems, the 8% experiencing reduced job security during the pandemic had a higher risk of anxiety, but not of depression, compared to employees with unaltered or increased job security. Loneliness and other psychosocial work factors explained more of the association than objective measures of job insecurity and financial worries. Conclusions: Reduced job security during the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have increased the risk of anxiety among individuals with a strong labour market attachment, primarily via loneliness and other psychosocial work factors. This illustrates the potentially far-reaching effects of the pandemic on mental health in the working population.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Chungkham, Holendro Singh, et al.
(author)
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Estimating Working Life Expectancy : A Comparison of Multistate Models
- 2023
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In: SAGE Open. - : Sage Publications. - 2158-2440. ; 13:2
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Increases in retirement ages make it particularly pressing to better understand how long people will work. Working life expectancy (WLE) is a useful measure for this and the current paper assesses the tools, that is, software packages, available to assess it. We do this using data from the English Longitudinal Survey on Ageing (ELSA, 2003-2018) and multistate models to estimate WLE stratified by sex and socioeconomic status. Men's versus women's WLEs were slightly higher at all ages. Estimates were similar in ELECT and SPACE by both sex and socioeconomic status. WLEs were comparatively higher from IMaCh, ranging from approximately 0.28 to 1.49 years. Life expectancy estimates from IMaCh were also higher compared to SPACE and ELECT. Using multistate models to estimate WLE provides a useful indication of the actual expected length of working life. More research is needed to better understand why estimates from IMaCh differed from ELECT and SPACE.
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| 6. |
- Chungkham, Holendro Singh, et al.
(author)
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Socioeconomic Status and Working Life Expectancy in Sweden
- 2022
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In: 33rd REVES – Advances in International Research on Health and Life Expectancy in the Covid-19 era. ; , s. 6-6
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Longer life expectancy and fertility decline have increased concerns about the security of old-age pensions. Raising retirement ages is one strategy to offset rising costs, though the option to retire varies considerably by socioeconomic status (SES) and sex. In terms of SES, the level of variation may depend on the measure used. Also, many workers now transition into retirement slowly, e.g., move from full- to part-time work. Thus, retirement age may not sufficiently capture how long people work. Working life expectancy (WLE)—the expected average number of years worked—better measures total working life. We use data from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health (SLOSH) from 2008 to 2020 (n=4,940 people age 50+ and n=74,093 person-observations) to examine WLE by education and occupation. We estimate a three-state multistate model (i.e., working, not working, dead) and a four-state model (working part-time, working full-time, not working, and dead); both assume a continuous-time first-order Markov process. We estimate two sex-stratified models, cross-classified by: 1) occupation; and 2) education. We find that professionals work full-time 1 year more than routine workers, regardless of sex. The low educated work full-time 1 year less than the highly educated. In our weighted three-state model, where part-time work contributed ½ of full-time work, the difference increased to 1.14 and 1.05 years, respectively. Our unweighted three-state model showed slightly larger education differences. Findings suggest that WLE differs by SES, regardless of sex, and the differences are greater by education than occupation. This has implications for extending working life policies.
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| 7. |
- Eyjólfsdóttir, Harpa Sif, et al.
(author)
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Are trajectories of self-rated health and physical working capacity during the retirement transition predicted by work-related factors and social class?
- 2024
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In: Work, Aging and Retirement. - 2054-4642 .- 2054-4650.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We aimed to identify short and long-term trajectories of self-rated health (SRH) and physical working capacity during the retirement transition, and investigate whether work-related factors and social class predict belonging to these trajectories. We used the representative, biennial Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health (SLOSH) 2006–2018. We applied group-based trajectory modeling with B-spline smoothers to model trajectories of SRH (n = 2,183) and physical working capacity (n = 2,152) during the retirement transition. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted to investigate trajectory belonging by work-related factors and social class. There was a small “honeymoon effect” in SRH for the total sample. We found four trajectories of SRH and five of physical working capacity. The large majority sustained excellent or good SRH and physical working capacity throughout the study period. Almost 6% had Fairly poor SRH and physical working capacity starting from years before retirement, which remained throughout the study period. High job demands, low job control, adverse physical working conditions, and being in manual occupation increased the likelihood of belonging to the trajectory groups Deteriorating or Fairly poor when compared with the Excellent trajectory group for both SRH and physical working capacity. Our findings suggest that for most people health status is already established some years’ preretirement and maintained for years after retirement, except a short improvement in SRH in accordance with a honeymoon effect. In order to improve health and employability, interventions focusing on working environment should be aimed at younger and midlife employees as well as older workers.
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| 8. |
- Garefelt, Johanna, 1986-
(author)
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Work and sleep - what's stress got to do with it?
- 2022
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Work may affect sleep by reducing the time available for recovery and, via work stress, by reducing sleep quality. Further, people experiencing sleep disturbance may be less resistant to work stress. These processes may lead to the development of a vicious cycle between work and sleep, in which stress has a central role.Knowledge of the prospective relations between work, stress and sleep is limited, particularly from studies examining relationships from sleep to work stress and large-scale studies using objective measures of sleep.Consequently, this thesis aims to analyse the prospective relations, including directions of effects, between work-related factors, in particular work stress, and self-rated and objective measures of sleep.The first two studies used the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health, with biennial self-rated measures of work-related factors (demands, control, support, stress, physical factors, scheduling) and sleep. We used structural equation models to analyse the direction of effects between work-related factors and sleep. The next two studies used the Swedish Retirement Study, a prospective study using self-reports and actigraphy, which followed people into retirement. We used multilevel modelling to analyse within-individual changes in sleep duration, timing and quality over three waves across retirement.We observed prospective reciprocal relations between work stressors (demands, control and support), perceived stress and self-rated sleep quality. Work was associated with earlier timing of sleep and sleep deprivation of 30 minutes per night. Improvements in self-rated sleep quality after retirement were not accompanied by improvements in actigraph-measured sleep quality.In conclusion, this thesis has demonstrated that work, stress and sleep form a vicious cycle. Interventions targeting sleep disturbance could improve people’s experience of their work environments. Likewise, interventions aiming to lower stress and increase the flexibility of work could reduce the impact of work on sleep, and thereby on health, contributing to a decent and sustainable working life.
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| 9. |
- Hammarström, Anne, et al.
(author)
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Why does youth unemployment lead to scarring of depressive symptoms in adulthood? The importance of early adulthood drinking
- 2023
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In: Scandinavian Journal of Public Health. - : Sage Publications. - 1403-4948 .- 1651-1905.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Aim: The aim of the paper is to analyse if alcohol consumption could explain the scarring effect of youth unemployment on later depressive symptoms.Methods: The analyses are based on the 24-year follow-up of school leavers in a municipality in Northern Sweden (the Northern Swedish Cohort). Four-way decomposition analyses were performed to analyse if alcohol use at age 30 years could mediate and/or moderate the effect of youth unemployment (ages 18/21 years) on depressive symptoms in later adulthood (age 43 years).Results: Excessive alcohol use at early adulthood (age 30 years) mediates 18% of the scarring effect of youth unemployment on depressive symptoms in later adulthood. The scarring effect was seen among both those with and without excessive alcohol use.Conclusions: Youth unemployment leads to poor mental health later in life and part of these relations are explained by excessive alcohol consumption in early adulthood. Policy interventions should target the prevention of youth unemployment for reaching a lower alcohol consumption and better mental health.
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| 10. |
- Högnäs, Robin S., et al.
(author)
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It's giving me the blues : A fixed-effects and g-formula approach to understanding job insecurity, sleep disturbances, and major depression
- 2022
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In: Social Science and Medicine. - : Elsevier BV. - 0277-9536 .- 1873-5347. ; 297
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Research suggests that work-related factors like job insecurity increases the risk of major depression (MD), although it is unclear whether the association is causal. Research further suggests that job insecurity increases sleep disturbances, which is also a risk factor for MD. Based on current knowledge, it is possible that job insecurity operates through sleep disturbances to affect MD, but this pathway has not been examined in the literature. The current study extends the literature by using two complementary, counterfactual approaches (i.e., random- and fixed-effects regression and a mediational g-formula) to examine whether job insecurity causes MD and whether sleep disturbances mediate the relationship. A methodological triangulation approach allowed us to adjust for unobserved and intermediate confounding, which has not been addressed in prior research. Findings suggest that the relationship between job insecurity and MD is primarily direct, that hypothetically intervening on job insecurity (in our g-formula) would reduce MD by approximately 10% at the population level, and this relationship operates via sleep disturbances to some degree. However, the indirect pathway had a high degree of uncertainty.
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