Increased Employment for Segregated Roma May Improve Their Health: Outcomes of a Public–Private Partnership Project

Lucia Bosakova, Andrea Madarasova Geckova, Jitse P. van Dijk and Sijmen A. Reijneveld
Additional contact information
Lucia Bosakova: Department of Health Psychology, Medical Faculty, P.J. Safarik University in Kosice, Trieda SNP 1, 040 11 Kosice, Slovakia
Andrea Madarasova Geckova: Department of Health Psychology, Medical Faculty, P.J. Safarik University in Kosice, Trieda SNP 1, 040 11 Kosice, Slovakia
Jitse P. van Dijk: Graduate School Kosice Institute for Society and Health, P.J. Safarik University in Kosice, Trieda SNP 1, 040 11 Kosice, Slovakia
Sijmen A. Reijneveld: Department of Community and Occupational Medicine, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Antonius Deusinglaan 1, 9713 AV Groningen, The Netherlands

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 16, 1-14

Abstract: Increasing employment opportunities for segregated Roma might prevent major economic losses and improve their health. Involvement of the private sector in Roma employment, on top of intensified governmental actions, is likely to be a key to sustainable improvement, but evidence on this is scarce. Our aim was to determine the potential outcomes of such a partnership regarding increased employability and the resulting improved well-being and health. We therefore investigated a Roma employment project called Equality of Opportunity, run since 2002 by a private company, U.S. Steel Kosice, in eastern Slovakia. We conducted a multi-perspective qualitative study to obtain the perspectives of key stakeholders on the outcomes of this project. We found that they expected the employability of segregated Roma to increase in particular via improvements in their work ethic and working habits, education, skills acquisition, self-confidence, courage and social inclusion. They further expected as the main health effects of increased employability an improvement in Roma well-being and health via a stable income, better housing, crime reduction, improved hygienic standards, access to prevention and improved mental resilience. Social policies regarding segregated Roma could thus be best directed at increasing employment and at these topics in particular to increase their effects on Roma health.

Keywords: deprivation; Roma health; health promotion; unemployment; employability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/16/2889/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/16/2889/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:16:p:2889-:d:257093

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().