Teachers' Health: How General, Mental and Functional Health Indicators Compare to Other Employees? A Large French Population-Based Study.

Teachers' health is a key factor of any successful education system, but available data are conflicting. To evaluate to what extent teachers' health could be at risk, we used pre-pandemic data from the CONSTANCES population-based French cohort (inclusion phase: 2012-2019) and compared teachers (n = 12,839) included in the cohort with a random subsample selected among all other employees (n = 32,837) on four self-reported health indicators: perceived general health, depressive symptoms (CES-D scale), functional limitations in the last six months, and persistent neck/back troubles (Nordic questionnaire). We further restricted our comparison group to the State employees (n = 3583), who share more occupational similarities with teachers. Lastly, we focused on teachers and evaluated how their health status might differ across teaching levels (primary, secondary, and higher education). As compared to non-teacher employees, and even after adjusting for important demographic, socioeconomic, lifestyle, and occupational confounders, teachers were less likely to report bad perceived health and depressive symptoms but were more likely to present functional limitations. Trends were similar in the analyses restricted to State employees. Within the teaching population, secondary school teachers were more likely to report depressive symptoms but less frequently declared persistent neck/back troubles than primary school teachers. Our descriptive cross-sectional study based on a probability sampling procedure (secondary use of CONSTANCES inclusion data) did not support the idea that teachers' health in France was particularly at risk in the pre-pandemic period. Both cross-cultural and longitudinal studies are needed to further gain information on the topic of teachers' health around the world and to monitor its evolution over time, particularly during crises impacting the education system such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

What Levers to Promote Teachers' Wellbeing during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond: Lessons Learned from a 2021 Online Study in Six Countries.

To highlight effective levers to promote teachers' wellbeing worldwide, particularly during difficult times such as the COVID-19 pandemic, we investigated work-related factors associated with teacher wellbeing, across borders and cultures. In six countries/territories, we examined the factors that were most consistently and strongly associated with two indicators of wellbeing at work: (i) job satisfaction; and (ii) work/life balance, and three indicators of general wellbeing: (i) subjective health; (ii) mental health; and (iii) life satisfaction. Between May and July 2021, after 18 months of the pandemic, 8000 teachers answered the first edition of the International Barometer of Education Personnel's Health and Wellbeing (I-BEST): 3646 teachers from France, 2349 from Québec, 1268 from Belgium, 302 from Morocco, 222 from The Gambia, and 215 from Mexico. For each country/territory and each wellbeing indicator, we used a forward stepwise regression procedure to identify important determinants among a carefully selected set of 31 sociodemographic, private, and professional life factors. Aside from healthcare access, the factors most consistently and strongly associated with teacher wellbeing in France, Québec and Belgium (samples whose size were ≥1000) were related to the psychosocial and the organizational dimensions of work, namely: feeling of safety at school, autonomy at work, and the quality of relationships with superiors and quality of relationships with students. In the smaller samples of teachers from the three remaining countries (Morocco, The Gambia and Mexico), exploratory analyses showed that the feeling of safety and autonomy at work were, there too, consistently associated with wellbeing indicators. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the factors most consistently associated with teachers' wellbeing across countries were related to security and autonomy at work, supporting the importance to consider these aspects in a continuous, structural way at school. Factors associated with teachers' wellbeing in very different contexts require further cross-cultural study.

In-situ at a distance? challenges and opportunities for health and place research methods in a post-COVID-19 world.

In-situ methodologies, including go-along and photo-elicited interviews, are ideal for harnessing people's lived experiences of place and their meanings for health and health equity. Their immersive nature means that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted their use. Physical distancing measures combined to anxiety over the sharing of physical space have created ethical and practical challenges to the conduct of in-person in-situ methodologies. However, in-situ methodologies are precisely needed to gain deeper understandings of people's changing relationships to place post-COVID-19. In this commentary we discuss emerging challenges, highlight questions researchers should ask before engaging in these methods in the future, and explore adaptations and alternatives to traditional in-person in-situ methodologies.

Widening the gap? Unintended consequences of health promotion measures for young people during COVID-19 lockdown.

During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, global measures preventing the spread of the new coronavirus required most of the population to lockdown at home. This sudden halt to collective life meant that non-essential services were closed and many health promoting activities (i.e. physical activity, school) were stopped in their tracks. To curb the negative health impacts of lockdown measures, activities adapting to this new reality were urgently developed. One form of activity promoted indoor physical activity to prevent the adverse physical and psychological effects of the lockdown. Another form of activity included the rapid development of online learning tools to keep children and youth engaged academically while not attending school. While these health promoting efforts were meant to benefit the general population, we argue that these interventions may have unintended consequences and inadvertently increase health inequalities affecting marginalized youth in particular, as they may not reap the same benefits, both social and physical, from the interventions promoting at-home physical activities or distance learning measures. We elaborate on several interventions and their possible unintended consequences for marginalized youth and suggest several strategies that may mitigate their impact.