UPFRONT | Roundup MENTAL HEALTH Ottawa Single moms more likely to stay off work summit aims longer after injury, study finds to find relief One might expect that sin-on the Survey of Labour and gle parents with children living Income Dynamics (SLID), an for dementia at home may be less inclined annual Statistics Canada sur-to take time off work following vey of a representative sample sufferers a work-related injury. After all, of Canadian households. After Leading researchers and indus-try experts gathered in Ottawa in September to discuss how to accelerate the development of new treatments and technolo-gies to help people with demen-tia, their families and caregivers. The Canada-France Global Dementia Legacy Event was the second in a series of four such events stemming from the Summit on Dementia held last December in London. Delegates in the two-day event heard from global demen-tia experts, as well as people living with dementia and their family members. Federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose told delegates that dementia has a significant im-pact on individuals, families and caregivers. The delegates were provided updates on the development of an action framework to address the challenges and barriers for collaboration between academ-ia and industry. The framework aims to accel-erate the transformation of de-mentia research into real life products and services to prevent or delay the onset of dementia and improve the lives of people living with it. “The impact of dementia on individuals, caregivers, families and national economies are significant,” Ambrose said. “We must continue to work together to stem the tide and improve our understanding of these conditions, to alleviate the suffering it causes.” – The Canadian Press INJURY PREVENTION they tend to shoulder a greater burden of putting food on the table than people raising kids in marriages or common-law relationships. However, according to a new study, single mothers are more likely to need long recov-ery time than moms and dads with partners, and even single dads. In that study, Institute for Work & Health (IWH) re-searcher Dr. Imelda Wong defined long recovery time as seven days off work or more. Her finding is all the more surprising given that single moms are less likely than other types of parents to receive workers’ compensation. “Despite being more likely to experience longer work ab-sences, single moms are less likely to access workers’ com-pensation,” says Wong, a Mustard Post-Doctoral Fellow at IWH. Her study on work-injury absence and compensation among partnered and lone mothers and fathers has been published online, ahead of print by the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. Wong’s theory at the outset of the study was that single parents would come back to work sooner than others fol-lowing a work injury. She be-lieved this would be the case because time away from work can mean financial strain and higher risk of job loss, espe-cially for parents working in jobs that offer fewer benefits and less job protection. For the study, Wong drew filtering for wage earners aged 16 to 69 living with children under 25, she had a sample of about 88,000 respondents. In Wong’s sample, 11 per cent were single mothers and three per cent were single fathers. As a group, the single parents tended to be younger than parents with partners. They also had significantly less education and less job tenure. Single parents were more likely to be low earners. The proportion of single moms in the lowest income bracket (40 per cent) was nearly twice that of single dads (22 per cent) and nearly three times that of married or common-law mothers and fathers (15 per cent and 16 per cent respectively). When it comes to time off work after an injury, single moms were considerably more likely – 50 per cent more – than partnered fa-thers (the reference group) to be off work for seven or more days. This greater likelihood was seen after taking into account different factors, including socioeconomic and job-related factors. No difference was seen between single dads and part-nered dads. Partnered moms were slightly less likely than partnered dads to be off work for seven or more days, but that difference was so small it may have been due to chance. “There’s something going on with single moms,” says Wong. Among the other par-ents, those who tended to be off work seven days or more after a work injury were also the ones who tended to get benefits. Not so for single moms, however. Although they’re 50 per cent more likely than the others to be off work seven days or more, they’re less likely to receive benefits. And while single moms are more represented in groups that are both less likely to get workers’ compensation ben-efits and less likely to be off work – i.e. those who are young, who have less work tenure, and who work in temp, seasonal or casual jobs – for some reason, they’re more likely to be off work longer after an injury. Due to the kind of data available, however, Wong is unable to probe further for what the reasons might be. “We don’t know what it is about being a single mom that’s putting them at greater risk of being off work for seven days,” says Wong. “Could it be the type of injuries they incur? Or could it be the type of work they do?” It may also be, for example, that single moms work in the kinds of jobs that are less modifiable or in work-places that are less able to offer accommodation. – Institute for Work and Health www.canadianchiropractor.ca 12 Canadian Chiropractor October 2014
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