Impact of work hours on sleep quality: a non-linear and gendered disparity.

Purpose: Quality sleep is vital for good health. Although it is known that workhours affect sleep quality, it is not known at what point workhours begin to compromise sleep. Few studies consider workhours in the 'other job' (domestic and care work) or address reverse causality between sleep quality and how long people work.

Investigating the association between work family conflict (WFC) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in an Australian community-based cohort study.

Purpose: Difficulties managing work and family demands are common and have been found to be associated with stress and poor mental health. However, very few studies have examined Work Family Conflict (WFC) in connection with diagnosable anxiety disorders (and none with Australian representative data). The current study investigated whether high WFC was significantly associated with a diagnosis of Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) after controlling for a broad range of socio-demographic contextual factors, related psychosocial job, family and individual characteristics, and prior anxiety symptom history.

Working longer hours and body weight: An Australian study using household panel data (with measures of paid and unpaid time) to provide gender-specific estimates.

Time is a resource for health, and when time is constrained, people have less opportunity to maintain good health. This study focuses on the relationship between paid work hours (with a focus on long hours) and body weight for Australian men and women. Time is conceptualised as a 24-hour system, including time in paid work, time in unpaid work, and discretionary time (available for health promoting activities).

Adjusting tertiary mental health education during Covid-19: an Australian experience.

Globally, tertiary education has been greatly affected by the Covid-19 crisis. In this essay we explore the impact of the pandemic on this educational sector in an Australian setting; specifically, we discuss how the Research School of Population Health at the Australian National University adjusted and adapted to the changing circumstances arising from the pandemic. In this respect, two adjustments (both described in detail in the text) in the way mental health education was delivered at the School were proposed to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 and enhance the university's capacity to provide quality public health education to students.

Unencumbered and still unequal? Work hour - Health tipping points and gender inequality among older, employed Australian couples.

Could working into older age offer women an opportunity to 'catch up' their careers and redress their financial disadvantage in retirement? This is a period of relative 'unencumbrance' from childrearing, potentially freeing women's time for more paid work. Here, we examine whether women aged 50 to 70 are able to increase their workhours, and what happens to their mental health, vitality and wealth. We used a representative household-based panel of employed older Australians (the HILDA survey).

Reciprocal relationships between time pressure and mental or physical health in Australian mothers of preschool aged children.

The associations between time pressure and health are typically conceptualised and examined as unidirectional. This study examined the reciprocal relationships between time pressure and mental and physical health amongst working mothers of preschool children; a high-risk group for feeling time pressured. Using 5 waves of a panel study of Australian mothers when their children were aged 0-4 (n = 3878) and cross-lagged structural equation models, we find strong significant negative reciprocal associations between time pressure and mental and physical health, although these reciprocal associations were stronger and more consistent over time for mental health.

Workforce participation, health and wealth inequality among older Australians between 2001 and 2015.

Background: Australians born in 2012 can expect to live about 33 years longer than those born 100 years earlier. However, only seven of these additional years are spent in the workforce. Longer life expectancy has driven policies to extend working life and increase retirement age; the current Australian policy, which has increased the eligibility for the pension from 65 to 67 by 2023, assumes that an improvement in longevity corresponds with an improvement in healthy life expectancy.

Time for Physical Activity: Different, Unequal, Gendered.

We investigate time inequity as an explanatory mechanism for gendered physical activity disparity. Our mixed-effect generalized linear model with two-stage residual inclusion framework uses longitudinal data, capturing differing exchanges and trade-offs in time resources. The first stage estimates within-household exchanges of paid and family work hours.

How does working nonstandard hours impact psychological resources important for parental functioning? Evidence from an Australian longitudinal cohort study.

This study investigates the link between nonstandard schedules and three psychological resources salient to working parents' parental functioning (psychological distress, work-family conflict and relationship quality). Data from fathers and mothers are analysed separately, using a nationally representative sample of dual-earner parents (6190 observations from 1915 couples) drawn from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). The LSAC data was collected between 2008 and 2018 (with data collected every two years).

Does psychological distress directly increase risk of incident cardiovascular disease? Evidence from a prospective cohort study using a longer-term measure of distress.

Objective: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) incidence is elevated among people with psychological distress. However, whether the relationship is causal is unclear, partly due to methodological limitations, including limited evidence relating to longer-term rather than single time-point measures of distress. We compared CVD relative risks for psychological distress using single time-point and multi-time-point assessments using data from a large-scale cohort study.

Advancing a health equity agenda across multiple policy domains: a qualitative policy analysis of social, trade and welfare policy.

Objective: While there is urgent need for policymaking that prioritises health equity, successful strategies for advancing such an agenda across multiple policy sectors are not well known. This study aims to address this gap by identifying successful strategies to advance a health equity agenda across multiple policy domains.

Design: We conducted in-depth qualitative case studies in three important social determinants of health equity in Australia: employment and social policy (Paid Parental Leave); macroeconomics and trade policy (the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement); and welfare reform (the Northern Territory Emergency Response).

Australian parents' work-family conflict: accumulated effects on children's family environment and mental health.

Purpose: Many parents struggle to balance their work and family responsibilities. Yet, little research in the field of social psychiatry has explored the emergence of work-family conflict (WFC) as an important social determinant of mental health, particularly for children. The current study used longitudinal Australian population-based data to investigate the impact of parents' accumulated experiences of work-family conflict on children's mental health.

Bringing in critical frameworks to investigate agenda-setting for the social determinants of health: Lessons from a multiple framework analysis.

Public health scholars have increasingly called for greater attention to the political and policy processes that enable or constrain successful prioritisation of health on government agendas. Much research investigating policy agenda-setting in public health has focused on the use of single frameworks, in particular Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework. More recently, scholars have argued that blending complementary policy frameworks can enable greater attention to a wider range of drivers that influence government agendas away from or towards progressive social and health policies.

Identifying long-term psychological distress from single measures: evidence from a nationally representative longitudinal survey of the Australian population.

Background: Single time-point assessments of psychological distress are often used to indicate chronic mental health problems, but the validity of this approach is unclear. The aims of this study were to investigate how a single assessment of distress relates to longer-term assessment and quantify misclassification from using single measures to indicate chronic distress.

Methods: Data came from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, a nationally representative study of Australian adults.

Cost of poor health to the labour market returns to education in Australia: another pathway for socio-economic inequality.

While several studies have estimated returns to education in Australia, there is limited evidence regarding the influence of health on the returns. This paper identifies how health affects returns to education in the labour market using the Heckman selection bias-corrected model. We measured health status using a self-rated health item with five response categories 'poor, fair, good, very good, and excellent'.

Earning to learn: the time-health trade-offs of employed Australian undergraduate students.

Australian undergraduate students are facing difficult economic circumstances and rates of psychological distress are well above the general population. Many are combining their study with paid work to manage financially. There is, however, little to no research on the relationship between economic pressures, academic demands and health (mental and physical) among these young adults.

Flexible employment policies, temporal control and health promoting practices: A qualitative study in two Australian worksites.

For four decades, theories of job demand-control have proposed that higher occupational status groups have lower health risks due to the stress accompanying jobs featuring high demands but high control. This research examines whether Flexible Work Arrangements (FWAs) can improve the health prospects of a range of workers by giving greater control over work time arrangements. Our setting is Australia, where FWAs were introduced in 2009.

How can multiple frames enable action on social determinants? Lessons from Australia's paid parental leave.

How do public health advocates and practitioners encourage policy actors to address the social determinants of health? What strategies can be used to elevate healthy social policies onto government agendas? In this paper, we examine the case of Australia's first national paid parental leave scheme, announced in 2009 after decades of policy advocacy. This scheme provides job-protected leave and government-funded pay at the minimum wage for 18 weeks for eligible primary care givers on the birth of an infant, and has been shown to reduce health inequities. Drawing on documentary sources and interviews (n = 25) with key policy actors, this paper traces the evolution of this landmark social policy in Australia, focusing on the role of actors, institutions and policy framings in setting the policy agenda.

Feeding the Australian family: challenges for mothers, nutrition and equity.

Australian women shoulder the bulk of household duties including family food provisioning, despite increasing participation in the workforce. This research aimed to understand employed mothers' daily-lived experience of family food provisioning, in particular, the intersection between family food provisioning, gender inequality and nutritional guidelines as they impact women's time and health. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 22 employed mothers in South Australia.

BMI trajectories and risk factors among 2-11-year-old children by their immigrant status: evidence from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children.

Objective: This study aimed to identify body mass index (BMI) trajectories and their predictors in Australian children by their maternal immigrant status.

Methods: Data on 4142 children aged 2-3 years were drawn from the birth cohort of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. BMI was calculated according to the International Obesity Task Force cut-off points.

Shift work and mental health: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Shift work is common. However, research findings are mixed regarding the impact of shift work on mental health. This systematic review sought to provide a comprehensive summary of existing research examining the association between different types of shift work and mental health.

Long work hours of mothers and fathers are linked to increased risk for overweight and obesity among preschool children: longitudinal evidence from Germany.

Background: Most existing studies on maternal employment and childhood overweight/obesity are from the USA. They are predominantly cross-sectional and show a consistent linear association between the two. Less is known about the joint impact of fathers' and mothers' work hours on childhood overweight and obesity.

Part-time in general practice-a remedy to a time-based problem?

Background: Increasing numbers of GPs are reducing the hours they work in clinical practice. The reasons for and implications of this are not well-understood.

Objective: To investigate how the demands of general practice, especially new time pressures, impact GPs' professional and personal lives and work hour choices.