Primary Submission Category: Structural factors
How work compromises health: A qualitative study among young adults identified as sexual and gender minorities in the San Francisco Bay Area who currently or formerly smoked cigarettes
Authors: Emily Kaner Emile Sanders Mark D. Fleming Tamar MJ Antin
Presenting Author: Emily Kaner*
Work has been established as an important but underacknowledged social determinant of health. Though work has the potential to both promote and harm health, this analysis focuses on the health-compromising elements of work in a sample of sexual and gender minority (SGM) young adults in the San Francisco Bay Area who participated in a study investigating nicotine and tobacco use practices. Survey and interview data were collected from 100 participants ages 18-25 who reported current or former NT use. In-depth qualitative interviews explored their experiences of daily life, social identities, practices of NT use, and perceptions of health and wellbeing. A thematic analysis of the narratives highlighted the centrality of work in daily life. Participants described how work structures time and becomes a site of daily exploitation, and exposed the structural barriers that shape employment opportunities for SGM young adults. Analysis revealed how work may compromise health, and shape NT use. Results elucidate the harmful practices embedded in daily work and the inequities within the structure of work itself which underscore the need to shift focus away from individual behaviors like NT use and towards the structures of people’s everyday lives that compromise their health and wellbeing.