Abstract
This session will present the results of a study that revealed that rest and sleep, play and recreational activities, work, personal hygiene, and healthy eating were the occupations significantly associated with health status during COVID-19 lockdowns.
Primary Author and Speaker: Bernard Austin Kigunda Muriithi
While occupational resilience (OR) has been defined as the capacity to persist in occupations despite barriers, more research is needed to show how this capacity influences health. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, naturally occurring differences in OR impacted the performance of daily activities differently between individuals, groups, and communities. But it is not well known how subsequent differences in occupational performance, produced by variations in OR between people, affected health. This cross-sectional study answered: How were changes in the performance of 16 daily activities associated with health during COVID-19 lockdowns? 116 participants completed an online survey rating their health before and during COVID-19 lockdowns and comparing their recollection of the performance of 16 activities before COVID-19 with their performance during lockdowns. Multiple stepwise linear regression analysis was used to estimate the relationship between self-reported changes in activities during lockdowns and concurrent (during-lockdown) health status, while controlling for pre-COVID-19 health status. Only changes in activities that were uniquely and significantly associated with lockdown health status were retained in the final model. Health before COVID-19 accounted for 3.7% (P = 0.039) of the variance in health during COVID-19 lockdowns. After controlling for health before COVID-19, five types of activity were significantly and uniquely predictive of health during lockdowns, together accounting for 48.3% of the variance. These activities and the variances they accounted for were rest and sleep (29.5%, P <0.001), play and recreational activities (8%, P <0.001), work (4.8%, P = 0.002), personal hygiene (3.2%, P = 0.01), and healthy eating (2.8%, P = 0.013). The study suggests that low occupational resilience in these occupations should be a priority in policy and other interventions whenever performance of these occupations is constrained by lockdowns or comparable barriers.
Muriithi, B., & Muriithi, J. (2020). Occupational Resilience: A New Concept in Occupational Science. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 74(S1). https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2020.74S1-PO3508
Muriithi, B. A. K., Muriithi, J., Gupta, J., Radziak, J., & Story, A. (2022). Occupational resilience: Construct and practice implications in occupational therapy. Research Square. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1786056/v1