Impact of an intervention to activate unemployed people on the use of primary health care services

Abstract

Abstract Background Promoting well-being and health is a key policy instrument in municipalities. There are many ways to support the work ability of long-term unemployed people. Short term subsidized employment (300-500 €/person/month) being one widely used measure. The purpose was to study what kind of influence a short term employment has on the use of social and health care services of long-term unemployed people in sparsely populated area. Specifically, the aim was to investigate the use of primary health care services among people in subsidized employment, intervention (n = 67) and control group (n = 85) during five years period (2012-2016). Methods Individual-level data were extracted from registers (age: 19-65 years old, gender: 61 % men, 39 % woman, N = 152). The use of primary health care was examined in the case study by means of annual averages, cumulative percentages and regression analysis. Results According to preliminary results, there were differences in the prevalence of primary health care services use and how the use of services changed among intervention and control groups. The use of services in intervention group increased until the end of the intervention year, but decreased in the following year, 2016. The use of services in control group increased until 2016. Regression analysis was carried out to study the change; a year and an intervention for 2014-2016 were made as a predictor. It was found out that the number of visits increased each year by looking at both groups together (p = 0.012). The subsidized employment that started in 2014 had a statistically significant reducing effect on the use of services (p = 0.034) in intervention group in 2014-2016. Conclusions Municipalities’ health promotion and subsidized employment work can have positive impact on disadvantaged groups such as long-term unemployed people in sparsely populated area. Creating data for the use of services from local registers was very time consuming and challenging process, but possible. Key messages Promoting well-being and health is a key policy instrument in municipalities. Municipalities’ health promotion and subsidized employment work can have positive impact on disadvantaged groups such as long-term unemployed people in sparsely populated area.