TY - JOUR

T1 - Initiatives Addressing Precarious Employment and Its Effects on Workers' Health and Well-Being

T2 - A Systematic Review

AU - Gunn, Virginia

AU - Kreshpaj, Bertina

AU - Matilla-Santander, Nuria

AU - Vignola, Emilia F

AU - Wegman, David H

AU - Hogstedt, Christer

AU - Ahonen, Emily Q

AU - Bodin, Theo

AU - Orellana, Cecilia

AU - Baron, Sherry

AU - Muntaner, Carles

AU - O'Campo, Patricia

AU - Albin, Maria

AU - Håkansta, Carin

PY - 2022/2/16

Y1 - 2022/2/16

N2 - The prevalence of precarious employment has increased in recent decades and aspects such as employment insecurity and income inadequacy have intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this systematic review was to identify, appraise, and synthesise existing evidence pertaining to implemented initiatives addressing precarious employment that have evaluated and reported health and well-being outcomes. We used the PRISMA framework to guide this review and identified 11 relevant initiatives through searches in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and three sources of grey literature. We found very few evaluated interventions addressing precarious employment and its impact on the health and well-being of workers globally. Ten out of 11 initiatives were not purposefully designed to address precarious employment in general, nor specific dimensions of it. Seven out of 11 initiatives evaluated outcomes related to the occupational health and safety of precariously employed workers and six out of 11 evaluated worker health and well-being outcomes. Most initiatives showed the potential to improve the health of workers, although the evaluation component was often described with less detail than the initiative itself. Given the heterogeneity of the 11 initiatives regarding study design, sample size, implementation, evaluation, economic and political contexts, and target population, we found insufficient evidence to compare outcomes across types of initiatives, generalize findings, or make specific recommendations for the adoption of initiatives.

AB - The prevalence of precarious employment has increased in recent decades and aspects such as employment insecurity and income inadequacy have intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this systematic review was to identify, appraise, and synthesise existing evidence pertaining to implemented initiatives addressing precarious employment that have evaluated and reported health and well-being outcomes. We used the PRISMA framework to guide this review and identified 11 relevant initiatives through searches in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and three sources of grey literature. We found very few evaluated interventions addressing precarious employment and its impact on the health and well-being of workers globally. Ten out of 11 initiatives were not purposefully designed to address precarious employment in general, nor specific dimensions of it. Seven out of 11 initiatives evaluated outcomes related to the occupational health and safety of precariously employed workers and six out of 11 evaluated worker health and well-being outcomes. Most initiatives showed the potential to improve the health of workers, although the evaluation component was often described with less detail than the initiative itself. Given the heterogeneity of the 11 initiatives regarding study design, sample size, implementation, evaluation, economic and political contexts, and target population, we found insufficient evidence to compare outcomes across types of initiatives, generalize findings, or make specific recommendations for the adoption of initiatives.

KW - COVID-19/epidemiology

KW - Employment

KW - Humans

KW - Occupational Health

KW - Pandemics

KW - SARS-CoV-2

U2 - 10.3390/ijerph19042232

DO - 10.3390/ijerph19042232

M3 - Review

C2 - 35206419

VL - 19

JO - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

JF - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

SN - 1661-7827

IS - 4

ER -