Background: Becoming unemployed is associated with poorer health, including weight gain. Middle- and older-age adults are a growing segment of workforces globally, but they are also more vulnerable to changes to employment status, especially during economic shocks. Expected workforce exits over the next decade may exacerbate both the obesity epidemic and the economic burden of obesity. This review extends current knowledge on economic correlates of health to assess whether employment transitions impact body weight by sex/gender among middle-aged and older adults. Methods: Eight bibliometric databases were searched between June and July 2021, supplemented by hand-searches, with no restriction on publication date or country. Longitudinal studies, or reviews, were eligible when examining body weight as a function of employment status change in adults ≥50 years. Data extraction and quality appraisal used predefined criteria; reported findings were analysed by narrative synthesis. Results: We screened 6,001 unique abstracts and identified 12 articles that met inclusion criteria. All studies examined retirement; of which two also examined job-loss. Overall, studies showed that retirement led to weight gain or no difference in weight change compared to non-retirees; however, reported effects were not consistent for either women or men across studies or for both women and men within a study. Reported effects also differed by occupation: weight gain was more commonly observed among retirees from physical occupations but not among retirees from sedentary occupations. Few studies assessed the role of health behaviours; sleep was the least studied. Most studies were medium quality. Conclusions: Existing studies do not provide a clear enough picture of how employment transitions affect body weight. Firm conclusions on the impact of employment transitions on weight cannot be made without further high-quality evidence that considers the role of gender, job-type, other health behaviours, and other transitions, like job-loss.

COVID-19 vaccine-induced immunity wanes over time, and with the emergence of new variants, additional “booster” doses have been recommended in Canada. However, booster vaccination uptake has remained low, particularly amongst younger adults aged 18–39. A previous study by our research team found that an altruism-eliciting video increased COVID-19 vaccination intentions. Using qualitative methods, the present study aims to: (1) identify the factors that influence vaccine decision-making in Canadian younger adults; (2) understand younger adults’ perceptions of an altruism-eliciting video designed to increase COVID-19 vaccine intentions; and (3) explore how the video can be improved and adapted to the current pandemic context. We conducted three focus groups online with participants who: (1) received at least one booster vaccine, (2) received the primary series without any boosters, or (3) were unvaccinated. We used deductive and inductive approaches to analyze data. Deductively, informed by the realist evaluation framework, we synthesized data around three main themes: context, mechanism, and intervention-specific suggestions. Within each main theme, we deductively created subthemes based on the health belief model (HBM). For quotes that could not be captured by these subthemes, additional themes were created inductively. We found multiple factors that could be important considerations in future messaging to increase vaccine acceptance, such as feeling empowered, fostering confidence in government and institutions, providing diverse (such as both altruism and individualism) messaging, and including concrete data (such as the prevalence of vulnerable individuals). These findings suggest targeted messaging tailored to these themes would be helpful to increase COVID-19 booster vaccination amongst younger adults.

Objective: To examine gender-specific associations of four economic stressors and self-reported changes in food intake during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design: Four rounds of a nationally representative cross-sectional survey (n = 9207) in Canada (May 2020 to December 2021). Stratified multilevel logistic regression models conditioned on provincial and individual confounders to examine main and independent associations between stress over financial concerns, having enough food, accessing benefits, or losing one’s job and self-reported eating more or less than usual. Results: Overall, 36.4% of respondents increased or decreased their usual food intake since the pandemic. Stress over financial concerns was independently associated with higher odds of eating more among women (OR 1.63 [CI95: 1.33, 2.01]) and men (1.66 [1.32, 2.08]), and also eating less among women (1.64 [1.14, 2.36]) and men (1.76 [1.21, 2.56]). Stress over having enough food was independently associated with higher odds of eating less among women (1.59 [1.11, 2.28]) and men (1.82 [1.21, 2.75]). Stress over losing one’s job was independently associated with higher odds of both eating more and eating less among men only (1.49 [1.17, 1.89] and 1.61 [1.11, 2.34], respectively). Conclusion: Four types of economic stressors affected self-reported altered food intake in both genders, with stronger associations in men, and the job-loss stressor was only associated with men’s reported food intake.