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January 8, 2008Connection Between Job Loss and Poor Health |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Employees who lose their jobs because of their health suffer more significant depression and detrimental health outcomes than people who lose their jobs for non-health reasons, new research shows. It's not clear how many people involuntarily lose their jobs for health-related reasons, but shaping policy to meet the needs of this population of the unemployed is critical, a University of Michigan professor says. "We need to know more about this population for intervention and policy reasons," said Sarah Burgard, assistant professor of sociology with appointments in the Institute for Social Research and the School of Public Health. People who have lost their jobs and want to get back to work may need the assistance of interim health insurance coverage, unemployment benefits, and re-employment programs. Increasingly, part-time, temporary or short-term service industry jobs are replacing the standard, full-time jobs disappearing from manufacturing and other industries, and the new jobs often lack health insurance coverage or unemployment insurance eligibility. This means that people working part-time or with other nonstandard employment contracts will face the greatest challenges getting back into the labor force if they experience a job loss; they don't benefit from these programs, Burgard says. For example, since health insurance is often tied to full-time, long term employment, the most vulnerable workers in the new service economy have no access to employer-sponsored health care while they are employed. The University of Michigan School of Public Health has been working to promote health and prevent disease since 1941, and is consistently ranked among the top five public health schools in the nation.
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