Health Effects of Involuntary Job Loss in Older Workers

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application is a request for a Mentored Research Scientist Development Award in Aging (K01). The overall aim of the proposal is to provide the candidate, William T. Gallo, Ph.D., with a supervised training and research experience that will enable him to become an independent investigator focusing on the effect of involuntary job loss among workers nearing retirement on adverse health changes and mortality. Dr. Gallo, an economist whose multidisciplinary research encompasses the fields of economics, social epidemiology, and gerontology, is currently a faculty member in the Division of Health Policy and Administration at the Yale University School of Medicine. The K01 award, and the supportive research environment at Yale, will provide Dr. Gallo with the scientific tools necessary for successful career development. The specific objectives of the career development plan will be achieved by undertaking relevant didactic and substantive training. The didactic training will develop an understanding of the health dynamics of older individuals, explore the role of behavioral and psychosocial factors in health, elucidate the etiology and epidemiology of the health outcomes to be examined, and provide rigorous statistical training in the methods used to analyze longitudinal and survival data. The research will be explored within the framework of a well-established model of geriatric health, developed by Dr. Gallo's sponsor, Dr. Mary Tinetti, which posits declines in the health of older people as a multifactorial process, determined by both predisposition and precipitating, or situational, events, such as involuntary job loss. The proposed research will investigate the role of involuntary job loss as a precipitating event for adverse changes in physical functioning and depressive symptoms, and the onset of myocardial infarction and stroke among predisposed older workers; and will identify the subgroup(s) of older persons who are particularly vulnerable to these outcomes in the setting of job loss. Identifying vulnerable subgroups is a necessary step in designing targeted interventions to prevent declines in health following job loss. The research is based on data from five waves of the Health Retirement Survey (HRS), a NIA-funded, nationally representative sample of older adults in the United States. The estimated analytic sample for this research will include approximately 4,990 individuals, nearly 500 of which experience involuntary job loss.