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What if the president fixed unemployment but it wasn't enough?

Research raises questions about the potentially lingering health effects of the nation’s economic downturn.

By Jonathan Purtle

In the fall of 2009, near the height of the great recession, researchers at Yale conducted the random door-to-door survey of households in New Haven, Conn. Seventy three percent of those approached completed the survey, yielding a study sample of over 1,200 people. Of them, 14.5 percent reported being unemployed and looking for work, 18.4 percent working part-time.

Compared to those who were working, unemployed respondents reported smoking more cigarettes, consuming more alcoholic beverages, eating unhealthy food with greater frequency and healthy food less often; they exercised less, too. Interestingly, a pattern also emerged along the lines of un/full/part-time employment — with those working part time faring better on certain health behaviors than the unemployed, but worse than those who had full-time jobs.

For one, Republicans might want to reconsider their pledge to repeal President Obama's health-system overhaul, the Affordable Care Act, if Romney is elected. A major flaw in the current design of our employer-based health care system is that it cuts out on people when their needs are greatest. Unemployment is a time when people most benefit from primary care and mental health services. Denying access to preventive services at such a critical juncture is a great recipe for increasing the incidence of costly chronic diseases — and, incidentally, the cost of uncompensated care that ends up being shouldered by taxpayers.

Public health officials should more consistently think of unemployment as a risk factor for adverse health outcomes. They should direct resources — such as interventions to increase physical activity and reduce stress — to the communities most affected.

With rates of unemployment seemingly stuck on high, we need to protect the psychological well-being, and health, of those who are still without work. If not, we risk an unpleasant scenario that you probably never heard mentioned at the Democratic or Republican conventions: the domestic economy might rebound, but the population's health might not.

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