“Work (dis)ability and age: Managing health in the workplace”.

http://agingandsociety.com/2016-conference

 

É o título do trabalho de autoria de Cláudia Fernandes (CATIM), Carlos Silva (CINTESIS) e Anabela Pereira (UA) que foi apresentado na conferência “Aging & Society Conference 2016 Special Focus on Aging, Life-course and Social Change”, que se realizou na Universidade de Linköping, Polo de Norrköping, na Suécia nos passados dias 6 e 7 de Outubro.

O trabalho apresentado teve como explorar e analisar os principais padrões e tendências que determinam (in)capacidade para o trabalho em trabalhadores da indústria ao longo do seu ciclo de vida, por forma a fundamentar futuros programas de intervenção.

http://agingandsociety.com/2016-conference

Long description:

The workforce is very diverse and heterogeneous in relation to health and functional capacities, which will reflect on workers work ability (WA). As a consequence workers differences are large along the lifespan and before retirement. Therefore there is a pronounced need of knowing WA trends in industry workers to consubstantiate industrial interventions focusing on regaining, maintaining and promoting WA along the lifespan.

It was conducted a cross sectional survey encompassing 621 industry workers (386 men and 235 women) with ages between 20 and 65 years old. To assess work ability (WA) it was used the Portuguese version of the Work Ability Index (WAI).
Generally workers WA decreases with age, but there are some life periods when differences between genders are more pronounced. Trends concerning age and gender differences in WA arise when analysing: prevalence of diseases and/or disorders with medical diagnosis due to accident, general diseases and disorders prevalence. It’s also denoted patterns concerning chronical diseases and slight mental disorders prevalence in the workplace. Based on the research results, complementary intervention strategies and measures will be analysed and discussed. The identified measures can be implemented through integration on enterprises occupational health and safety management systems. Such systems or other industrial management strategies require a continual process, that after planning must be implemented, evaluated and if it’s the case the measures and its operationalization must be redone according to the evaluation process results. This context calls for better adjustment of working environments, namely in industrial settings, and WA aiming healthier workplaces and longer, healthy and productive workers working life.