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Making Connections Between Work and Health

AHS E-News: September 2019

Dr. David Strauser

Dr. David Strauser has long been interested in relationships among work, health, and well-being, especially as those relationships play out within marginalized groups who often are either unemployed or underemployed. He has been studying factors such as work personality and vocational behavior with a focus on people with chronic health conditions and disability, and he presented his research at the Fall College Meeting as the 2019 King McCristal Distinguished Scholar in the College of Applied Health Sciences.

Dr. Strauser, a professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, said it is important to study work because it is critical to a sense of empowerment, social connection, and well-being. Less than one-third of people with chronic health conditions or disability are employed, while nearly three-quarters of those without health challenges are. Those who do work are often in marginalized jobs with low status, low pay, and few if any benefits. The absence of satisfactory employment opportunities may cause people with chronic health issues or disability to disconnect from society.

“People with marginal earnings are more likely to face issues with their mental health as well, such as depression and anxiety, and lower levels of physical health, with a greater incidence of conditions such as obesity and hypertension,” he said.

His research seeks to answer the question, How do we get marginalized groups into the labor market and keep them there? His work has focused on work personality, which describes how people connect to work, and on cognitive processing, which can impact job satisfaction, performance, and mood.

Using the Developmental Model of Work Personality, Dr. Strauser created a scale to measure how individuals perceive themselves as workers and how strongly they relate to work-related needs and values. His Developmental Work Personality Scale has been a useful tool for rehabilitation counselors seeking to help people with chronic health problems and disabilities prepare for successful entry or re-entry into the labor market. He also developed the Illinois Work and Well Being Model, which emphasizes the interaction of contextual and career development domains as integral to improving participation in areas of work, society, community, and home.

Among his many results, he has found that young adult cancer survivors and people with disabilities have problems with engaging in effective work-related problem solving and decision making and with managing all the relationships (family, employer, society) necessary to solving employment problems.

Dr. Strauser said the relationship between work and well-being presents a plethora of public health issues on which researchers should focus, including the issue of a living wage, which he distinguished from a mandatory minimum wage. “A living wage is adjusted to the environment in which the employee lives and takes into account how much is needed to have an acceptable quality of life,” he said. “If we accept that those who earn more have better health, we need to make the concept of a living wage a research priority.”

Another issue is workers compensation. Nearly 3 million people a year suffer non-fatal work injuries. Once they disengage from their jobs and go out on disability, many either do not re-engage or do so at a much lesser level. Rural and urban poverty can prevent people from connecting to the labor market, and it’s complicated by the issue of transportation. Do vocational programs make a difference? Dr. Strauser pointed out that vocational programs and other employment counseling programs often are located in non-accessible or undesirable areas that are not served by public transportation. Many times, he said, individuals might be dissuaded from disconnecting from employment with the support of employee assistance programs, but these programs often are highly stigmatized and are used by employers to identify “problem” employees.

Addressing the complexity of the work and health relationship, then, requires a deep understanding of all of these issues and more, as well as targeted efforts to educate not only potential employees but also employers. As was apparent from the McCristal Dr. Strauser is adding significantly to that understanding and education.