Airlan (Spain)

Introduction: Perceived stress (including work-related stress) is associated with cardiovascular health. We studied the association between work-family conflict and AHA’s ideal cardiovascular health (ICH) score at the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil) baseline. Hypothesis: Individuals with more frequent work-family conflict have worse ICH scores. Methods: We analyzed data from 11,351 active workers, aged 35-74 years. ICH scores were calculated based on the four lifestyle (diet, physical activity, smoking and body-mass index) and three health (blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose and total cholesterol) metrics proposed by the AHA. Work-family conflict was assessed as time and strain-based work interference with family; family interference with work and lack of time for personal care and leisure. We used quasi-Poisson regression models to analyze the association between work-family conflict and ICH scores, with positive relative predicted score differences (rPSD) indicating higher predicted ICH scores. Results: Subjects with frequent lack of time for personal care and leisure had lower global (rPSD: -2.9%; p=0.01) and lifestyle (rPSD: -8.2%; p<0.01) ICH scores but higher health ones (rPSD: +4.8%; p=0.02). After stratifying by sex, the negative association between lack of time for personal care and leisure and global ICH scores remained significant only in women. In addition, women had a negative association between lifestyle ICH scores and both frequent strain-based work interference with family (rPSD: -5.1%; p<0.01) and family interference with work (rPSD: -8.6%; p<0.01). Conclusions: We found significant associations between work-family conflict and ICH scores in this large multicenter sample. Associations between work-family conflict and ICH score (especially lifestyle metrics) were more intense in women.