Change in cardiovascular health and disparities according to age, sex, working environment, and retirement

Résumé :

The project addresses the concept of primordial prevention, a complimentary approach of primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases that aims to prevent the onset of cardiovascular risk factors in the first place. Using yearly follow-up data of the Gazel cohort study over more than 20 years, the first objective is to examine changes in cardiovascular health (CVH) as defined by the 7 metrics of the American Heart Association (nonsmoking; and ideal levels of body mass index, physical activity, diet, blood pressure, fasting blood glucose and total cholesterol) and to explore disparities according to sex/gender, age, and working environment. The second more specific objective is to study retirement as a window of opportunity to improve CVH by quantifying the relationship between timing of retirement with the level of CVH accounting for the working environment.

 The analysis will be conducted in GAZEL participants in whom the 7 metrics of CVH and covariates including working environment are available over the follow-up up to December 2015. Longitudinal analyses will be used to examine change in CVH and to assess associations with retirement.

We hypothesise that: trajectories of CVH over time may differ according to working environment whereas disparities according to sex/gender may attenuate over time due to aging. The magnitude of improvement in CVH after retirement is hypothesised to be higher among participants with unfavourable working environments and low professional skills as compared to those with favourable work environment and high professional skills