Parent Support Programmes for Families Who are Immigrants: A Scoping Review

Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health - Parental support is of paramount importance in the promotion of positive parenting, strengthening parenthood and protecting children from disadvantages...     

Differential associations of job control components with mortality: a cohort study, 1986-2005

Inconsistent evidence of the hypothesized favorable effects of high job control on health may have resulted from a failure to treat job control as a multifactor concept. The authors studied whether the 2 components of job control, decision authority and skill discretion, were differentially associated with cause-specific mortality in 13,510 Finnish forest company employees with no history of severe illness. Surveys on work characteristics were carried out in 1986 and 1996, and the respondents were followed up until the end of 2005 by use of the Statistics Finland National Death Registry. During a mean follow-up of 15.5 years, 981 participants died. In the analyses adjusted for confounders, employees with high and intermediate levels of skill discretion had a lower all-cause mortality risk than those with low skill discretion, with hazard ratios of 0.84 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.69, 1.02) and 0.81 (95% CI: 0.69, 0.96), respectively. In contrast, high decision authority was associated with elevated risks of all-cause, cardiovascular, and alcohol-related mortality, with hazard ratios of 1.28 (95% CI: 1.06, 1.54), 1.49 (95% CI: 1.11, 2.02), and 2.03 (95% CI: 1.03, 4.00), respectively. The results suggest that job control is not an unequivocal concept in relation to mortality; decision authority and skill discretion show different and to some extent opposite associations.     

Tissue distribution of angiotensin converting enzyme in the rat: effect of captopril treatment

Effect on different tissues with regard to angiotensin converting enzyme during captopril treatment in the rat was studied. Male Wistar-Kyoto rats (n = 9) were treated during four weeks with captopril dissolved into the drinking water at the dose 30 mg/kg/day. Control rats (n = 9) had water only. Serum angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) activity increased three-fold during captopril treatment, and ACE of purified pulmonary plasma membranes increased about 64% (P less than 0.001) compared to untreated rats. ACE activity of membrane fractions of other tissues studied i.e. testicles, epididymes, kidneys, and small intestine brush border did not increase similarly during captopril treatment. The highest amounts of ACE was demonstrated in epididymes, but captopril did not produce increased amounts of ACE in the epididymes. The main source of increased serum ACE activity during captopril treatment appeared to be in the pulmonary tissue.     

The association of ownership type with job insecurity and worry about job stability: the moderating effects of fair management, positive leadership, and employment type

This study examined whether the ownership type is associated with job insecurity and worry about job stability and whether the type of employment contract, positive leadership, and fair management moderated these associations. Survey data from 1249 Finnish female elderly care staff aged 18 to 69 years were used. Job insecurity and worry about job stability were highest in not-for-profit sheltered homes. However, positive leadership and fair management were able to mitigate this insecurity and worry. Job insecurity was highest among fixed-term employees in public sheltered homes or not-for-profit nursing homes. Thus, promoting good leadership and fair management would be of importance.     

Workplace social capital and all-cause mortality: a prospective cohort study of 28,043 public-sector employees in Finland

Objectives. We examined the association between workplace social capital and all-cause mortality in a large occupational cohort from Finland.Methods. We linked responses of 28 043 participants to surveys in 2000 to 2002 and in 2004 to national mortality registers through 2009. We used repeated measurements of self- and coworker-assessed social capital. We carried out Cox proportional hazard and fixed-effects logistic regressions.Results. During the 5-year follow-up, 196 employees died. A 1-unit increase in the mean of repeat measurements of self-assessed workplace social capital (range 1–5) was associated with a 19% decrease in the risk of all-cause mortality (age- and gender-adjusted hazard ratio [HR] = 0.81; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.66, 0.99). The corresponding point estimate for the mean of coworker-assessed social capital was similar, although the association was less precisely estimated (age- and gender-adjusted HR = 0.77; 95% CI = 0.50, 1.20). In fixed-effects analysis, a 1-unit increase in self-assessed social capital across the 2 time points was associated with a lower mortality risk (odds ratio = 0.81; 95% CI = 0.55, 1.19).Conclusions. Workplace social capital appears to be associated with lowered mortality in the working-aged population.In the past 2 decades, interest has grown in the health effects of social capital, defined as the features of social structures, such as levels of interpersonal trust and norms of reciprocity and mutual aid, that act as resources for individuals and facilitate collective action.^1–3 In the literature, social capital has been conceptualized (and measured) both at the individual level and at the group level.^4,5 At the individual level, the most common approach has been to measure individual perceptions of the level of cohesion or solidarity in the group to which the individual belongs. At the group level, the focus is on the collective (e.g., neighborhood or workplace). Thus, a common practice has been to aggregate the individual responses from surveys to the collective. Some authors have also measured social capital through objective indicators that are not dependent on respondent perceptions, such as density of civic associations within a community.⁶ Another approach derives measures of social capital from social network analysis.⁷Adding to cross-sectional ecological analyses,⁸ at least 7 prospective studies in nonoccupational settings have examined the association between social capital and mortality among the working-aged population through at least 1 indicator of social capital.^9–15 Findings from those studies have been mixed, although the preponderance of evidence favors a weak inverse association.Several factors may have contributed to inconsistent evidence. For example, previous studies on mortality have focused on social capital in residential or geographical areas rather than in occupational settings, although recent research has emphasized the importance of the evaluation of workplace social capital to explain variations in employees'' health.^16–19 Indeed, for working populations, sources of variation in social capital are likely to be found in settings where people spend an increasing portion of their daily lives: workplaces.^20,21 Furthermore, because all these studies assessed social capital at only 1 time point, further data with repeated measurements of social capital are needed to strengthen the evidence.The Finnish Public Sector Study had at least 3 strengths that addressed the question of workplace social capital and mortality. First, it provided unique individual- and workplace-level survey data from a large occupational cohort linked to comprehensive national mortality registers. The linkage was complete, minimizing any bias related to selective sample retention. Second, the data included repeated assessments of workplace social capital, which enabled the determination of both repeated exposure and change in workplace social capital. Third, both self- and coworker-assessed social capital were available. This information helped to address reporting bias. We used these data to examine the hypothesis that repeated exposure to low workplace social capital and adverse changes in social capital are associated with increased mortality, corresponding to previous findings on workplace social capital and self-rated health and depression,²² important correlates of all-cause mortality.²³