The Identification of a Threshold of Long Work Hours for Predicting Elevated Risks of Adverse Health Outcomes

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Am J Epidemiol
• Personal Author:
  Conway, Sadie H. ; Pompeii, Lisa A. ; Gimeno Ruiz de Porras, David ; Follis, Jack L. ; Roberts, Robert E.
• Description:
  Working long hours has been associated with adverse health outcomes. However, a definition of long work hours relative to adverse health risk has not been established. Repeated measures of work hours among approximately 2,000 participants from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1986-2011), conducted in the United States, were retrospectively analyzed to derive statistically optimized cutpoints of long work hours that best predicted three health outcomes. Work-hours cutpoints were assessed for model fit, calibration, and discrimination separately for the outcomes of poor self-reported general health, incident cardiovascular disease, and incident cancer. For each outcome, the work-hours threshold that best predicted increased risk was 52 hours per week or more for a minimum of 10 years. Workers exposed at this level had a higher risk of poor self-reported general health (relative risk (RR) = 1.28; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.06, 1.53), cardiovascular disease (RR = 1.42; 95% CI: 1.24, 1.63), and cancer (RR = 1.62; 95% CI: 1.22, 2.17) compared with those working 35-51 hours per week for the same duration. This study provides the first health risk-based definition of long work hours. Further examination of the predictive power of this cutpoint on other health outcomes and in other study populations is needed.
• Subjects:
  Adult Article Bayes Theorem Cancer Cardiovascular Disease Cardiovascular Diseases Educational Status Family Characteristics Female Health Status Humans Incidence Long Work Hours Male Neoplasms Personnel Staffing And Scheduling Poisson Distribution Prevalence Retrospective Studies Risk Self-reported General Health Self Report United States Work Hours Work Schedule Tolerance

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• Source:
  Am J Epidemiol. 186(2):173-183
• Pubmed ID:
  28459945
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC8852345
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  T42 OH008421/OH/NIOSH CDC HHSUnited States/ ; T42OH008421/ACL/ACL HHSUnited States/
• Volume:
  186
• Issue:
  2
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:e4229af43d86f33f5c5ab6ea764149820123589c8561c0b3db62f7beeeca5492
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/114591/cdc_114591_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 414.51 KB ]