Health, Work-Family Conflict and Organizational Characteristics in Nursing Homes: Multi-Level Findings from the Work, Family and Health Network

Orfeu Buxton, Harvard Medical School
Lisa Berkman, Harvard School of Public Health
Mary Durham, Kaiser Permanente
Georgia Karuntzos, RTI International

As women have increasingly joined the full time labor force in the United States, balancing the responsibilities of caring for families is especially challenging for women in lower/middle wage jobs. Family strains may be detrimental to health, and chronic stress may be taking a toll on the health of the nation. We studied direct care employees in an extended care company with nursing homes across New England to test a workplace intervention. Our multi-level study, a part of the Work, Family and Health Network, finds variations and clusters in work and family conditions and organizational and employee characteristics across worksites, and associations with two important employee health outcomes (sleep problems, tobacco consumption). Conditions that have strongest associations with smoking and sleep disruption include race/ethnicity, education, schedule control and psychological distress for tobacco, and occupational status, total workhours, and family supportive supervisor support and psychological distress for sleep deficiency.