The Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health (SLOSH, PI Hugo Westerlund) is a prospective survey of work, labour market participation and health initiated in 2006 and comprising all respondents of the Swedish Work Environment Surveys from 2003-2011 (total N=40 877), making the participants approximately representative of the Swedish working population at entry into the cohort. Postal questionnaires are collected every second year and responses are linked to a comprehensive set of administrative register data. 23 417 persons had as of the 2018 wave participated in at least two waves and over 2 000 persons had been followed across retirement. The youngest participants are 18 at the first wave and participants have so far been followed up to the age of 79 years. The questionnaires have a strong focus on psychosocial working conditions and health, with data also on private social circumstances and health behaviours, as well as special questions for those who are temporarily or permanently out of employment. Register data add sociodemographic, occupational and health information.
SLOSH cohort profile:
https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyy090
The IMAS project (Insurance Medicine All Sweden) at Karolinska Institutet (PI Kristina Alexanderson) includes extensive microdata, linked at individual levels from several nationwide registers for eight cohorts. For instance, one cohort covers all 5,343,000 people aged 16-64 and living in Sweden in 1990. Extensive register data on socio-demographics and occupational history, diagnosis-specific morbidity and mortality, sickness absence and disability pension, and age of retirement are available for all following year. Some data are available also for the years preceding 1990. The large numbers of old people and the yearly and detailed data provide good possibilities to perform important subgroup analyses. Thus, around 100,000 people who were aged 64 at inclusion in 1990 were 96 years in 2022 if still alive. Also, data for the equivalent later cohorts (1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020) are included. In all, 150,000 were also included in the Survey of Living Conditions (ULF – SILC), which adds self-reported data on a range of issues.
The Swedish Work Environment Survey (SWES) is a biennial cross-sectional survey of working respondents from the nationwide Labour Force Survey. All participants in SWES from 1989 onwards are included in the epidemiological database at the Stress Research Institute, with register data linked both retrospectively and prospectively. At baseline, participants answered a questionnaire about their work. They are linked to register data comprising year-by-year information from 1987 onwards about demographics, employment, income, sickness absence and disability pension, hospital admissions, drug purchases (from 2005) and cause-specific death.
The Whitehall II study of 10,308 British civil servants from 20 London-based departments (PI Kivimäki) recruited in 1985-1988 has extensive self-completion questionnaires, medical screening, and register data. Data is currently available from 9 study phases with data from phase 11 expected to become available during 2013. The participants were aged 35-55 years at baseline and aged 57 to 79 at the most recent phase 9 thus providing longitudinal data before, during and after retirement. A comprehensive range of measures related to work environment, retirement status, health behaviours and related physical, biological, cognitive and mental health variables has been collected.
The English Longitudinal Survey of Ageing (ELSA) is an open-access, nationally representative longitudinal survey of those aged 50 and over living in the community in England.
The same group of respondents have been interviewed at two-yearly interviews, to measure changes in their health, economic and social circumstances. Every four years participants have also undergone a health visit which involves measurements of physical function, anthropometric measurements and collection of blood samples (for extraction of biomarkers and DNA). The sample is regularly refreshed to retain the representativeness. To date the study has accomplished 10 waves of data collection.
Understanding Society, also known as the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), is an annual panel study representative of the British adult population over the age of 16–household members aged 10 to 15 are included as respondents of the youth questionnaire. At the first wave of the UKHLS in 2009/2011, data was collected from over 35 000 households, with interviews including a sample of over 100 000 people, which are followed-up annually. Fieldwork occurs over a period of two years and currently, eight waves of data (2009/11–2016/18) are available. As a multidisciplinary study, data from direct physical measurements, biological samples, as well as from self-reported questionnaires is collected. The UKHLS builds upon the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) that collected information from 1991 to 2008 and is included as one of the three main subsamples of the UKHLS. The other three subsamples of the UKHLS are: the general population sample; an ethnic minority boost; and an innovation sample for methodological research. The members of the BHPS sample have been incorporated in the second wave of the UKHLS in 2010; therefore, the BHPS sample can be followed-up into the UKHLS allowing the BHPS subsample to be extended to more than 25 years.
Finnish Retirement and Aging study (FIREA) (PI Sari Stenholm) is a longitudinal observational cohort on public sector workers who have been followed up with annual surveys, accelerometer and clinical measurements during retirement transition to post-retirement years. FIREA was set up to study changes in health behavioral and cardiometabolic risk factors during retirement transition, and to examine long-term consequences of work and retirement on health and functioning with advancing age.
FIREA survey cohort includes 6,783 participants, activity sub-study 908 participants and clinical sub-study 290 participants. The next follow-up will be conducted during 2023-2024, when participants are 70 years old. Collected data include survey items about health, chronic diseases, physical functioning, memory, lifestyle factors, psychosocial distress, social networks, work-related physical and psychological stressors as well as retirement intentions. Accelerometer data is collected with wrist-, thigh- and waist-worn devices. Clinical examination includes fasting blood sample, hair sample, measurements of anthropometry, body composition, cardiovascular function, physical fitness, physical and cognitive function. The cohort is linked to national registers including information on e.g. hospital admissions, prescription medication, rehabilitation and work place injuries.
Website
https://sites.utu.fi/firea/en/
The Well-being in Hospital Employees (WHALE) study (PI Naja Hulvej Rod) is a longitudinal observational cohort on work environment involving health care employees within the Capital Region of Denmark working at the time of questionnaire assessments in 2011 (N=29,004), 2014 (N=31,823) and 2017 (N=31,994) with response proportions above 80%. Self-reported information about employee physical and psychosocial work environment is collected at every wave. This is complemented by information about the organizational structure of all employees nested in work-units, departments, and institutions and administrative data on e.g. the organization of work time and sickness absence. The cohort is linked to national registers including information on e.g. hospital admissions, prescription medication, mortality and labour market attachment.
Cohort profile:
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/46/6/1758/3872167
The GAZEL (PI Zins) cohort comprises employees of the French national gas and electricity company. At baseline in 1989, 20,624 employees (73% men), aged 35-50, gave consent to participate. Information on health and work environment is collected by annual surveys. Data on job history, long-standing illness, and sickness absence are available from company records, and less than 1% of the participants were lost to follow-up until 2008. In 2013, 4,241 participants will be aged 55-64, and 16,369 will be 65-74 (counting also those who have or will have died).
GAZEL cohort profile :
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/44/1/77/654885
The Constances cohort, initiated in France with the aim of building a comprehensive and representative population-based cohort, serves as an accessible infrastructure for researchers and public health agencies. It comprises approximately 219,000 adults, aged between 18 to 69 at inception. This infrastructure provides invaluable resources for studying a plethora of health-related topics, including chronic diseases, aging, occupational health, and healthcare social disparities.
The cohort participants are annually monitored through self-administered questionnaires, health examinations occurring every 3-5 years, and complete linkage to administrative databases such as the French national health data system (SNDS) which provides healthcare consumption and CNAV (Caisse Nationale d’Assurance Vieillesse) database which provides information on employment status, income, and retirement benefits. Thus, Constances offers a rich dataset comprising thousands of variables sourced from self-reported data, clinical and biological test results, cognitive and physical assessments, healthcare usage data, employment-related factors, environmental (such as air pollution levels and proximity to green space …) and occupational exposure. A biobank supplementing the dataset for a sizable fraction enhances its depth. This exhaustive longitudinal data collection facilitates comprehensive studies on the multifaceted factors influencing occupational and health trajectories.
