Health behaviours of education professionals: any room for improvement? A study of French employees

Background

Education professionals have a role to play in health education, both as knowledge providers and role-models. To appraise their health awareness, we compared their health behaviours to those of non-education employees.

Methods

Using inclusion data of the CONSTANCES French cohort (2012-2019) and adjusting for important confounders (sex, age, education,...), we alternately compared three indicators of risky conducts (at-risk drinking, current smoking, past year-cannabis use) and two indicators of unhealthy lifestyle (low physical activity, overweight/obesity) between education professionals (n = 14730) and a random sample of non-education employees (n = 34244). Among education professionals, we distinguished between teachers (n = 12820), school principals (n = 372), principal educational advisers (n = 189), school health professionals (n = 128), and school manual/service staff (n = 1221).

Results

Teachers were less likely than non-education employees to be at-risk drinker, to smoke, to have used cannabis in the past year and to be overweight/obese. Other non-teaching education professionals were also rather less involved in risky conducts than non-education employees. Nonetheless, school principals and principal educational advisers reported more often low physical activity and school principals and manual/service staff were more prone to overweight/obesity than non-education employees.

Conclusions

In this large nationwide sample of French employees, education professionals were rather less involved in risky conducts than other non-education employees with a similar demographic and socioeconomic profile. Yet, non-teaching education professionals showed punctually unhealthy lifestyle indicators, suggesting a window of opportunity to improve both their own health and, indirectly through role-model, that of the youth with whom they interact daily.

Key messages

Education professionals, especially teachers, appear more health-conscious than average. There may still be room for improvement toward a healthier lifestyle. In addition, the average observed may be quite far from the recommended public health target, so that any action to enhance education professional’s health behaviours will have societal benefits.

Decline in Instrumental Activities of Daily Living over 4-Year: The Association with Hearing, Visual and Dual Sensory Impairments among Non-Institutionalized Women

OBJECTIVE

Most older adults express the wish to live at home as long as possible, thus autonomy promoting measures are essential. Hearing and visual impairments are common among older people, and they have been consistently associated with functional disability. However, longitudinal data are scarce, notably regarding dual sensory impairments (both in hearing and vision). We aimed at assessing the relationship between hearing, visual, and dual sensory impairments, and subsequent decline in instrumental activities of daily living (IADL).

DESIGN

Longitudinal.

SETTING

the French E3N-elderly sub-cohort.

PARTICIPANTS

4,010 community-dwelling older women born between 1925 and 1930, and free of IADL limitations in 2006.

MEASUREMENTS

Hearing and visual impairments were self-reported in 2006. IADLs were evaluated in 2006 and 2010.

RESULTS

After 4 years of follow-up, 588 women became limited in their IADLs. In logistic regression models adjusted for potential confounders, odds ratios [95% confidence interval] for developing IADL limitations were 1.18 [0.98; 1.41], 1.98 [1.26; 3.11], and 2.61 [1.50; 4.54] for hearing, visual, or both sensory impairments respectively, compared with no sensory impairment at baseline.

CONCLUSION

Results suggest that among autonomous older women, visual, and to a lesser extent, hearing impairment, have a short-term negative impact on their ability to perform daily activities, with some evidence of a multiplicative effect between sensory impairments. Appropriate evaluation and management of sensory impaired elderly, and more particularly those with dual impairments, may contribute to prevent disability in aging.