Q: Your Health Affairs study found 22.7% of healthcare support workers in nursing homes struggle with food insecurity. Why?
A: Wages tend to be higher in hospital (and other) settings. … But healthcare support workers are more likely to be shift and contract workers than salaried employees, so that creates some unpredictability in their wages (and) some periods of irregular earnings, and that may contribute to food insecurity.
Q: How does this play out at work?
A: Healthcare support jobs tend to be both physically demanding and psychologically strenuous — and there is evidence that links food insecurity with both physical and mental health. I think it’s plausible to think that being hungry is going to constrain the ability of a healthcare support worker to provide quality care to their patient.
Q: What can be done to fix it?
A: Some structural solutions that employers and policymakers could consider would include wage increases; at a policy level, minimum wage increases; and more equitable human resources policies like benefit packages that maximize take-home pay and provide other types of non-traditional benefits like referrals to community resources, childcare, cafeteria meals and employee housing programs.
From the October 2021 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
