A new study conducted at Jönköping International Business School (JIBS) at Jönköping University (JU), shows that the Swedish Covid-19 strategy, which focused on protecting at-risk groups, simultaneously had unintended consequences for people in these risk groups.

In the study, funded by the Kamprad Foundation, Charlotta Mellander, Professor of Economics at JIBS, and Jonna Rickardsson, Postdoctoral Researcher in Economics at JIBS, investigated the differences in perceived health status among people aged 69-70 (and 68-71) in Sweden - both in the year before the pandemic (2019) and during the first year of the pandemic (2020).

Over-70s perceived their health status to be worse

In the year before the pandemic, there was no major difference in how 69- and 70-year-olds ranked their health status, which is to be expected as there is only a one-year difference between the groups. One group could not be distinguished from the other. In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, 70-year-olds suddenly ranked their health status significantly lower than 69-year-olds did.

"Our theory is that this may have been because people in their 70s were constantly told that they were part of a vulnerable group. If you were in the 70+ group, you may have felt more vulnerable than if you were 69 and not in the so-called risk group,” says Charlotta Mellander.

During the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Public Health Agency of Sweden focused its recommendations on people aged 70 and over, as they were considered to be at risk of serious illness. In particular, they were advised to minimize social contacts.

Although research has emphasized age as a prominent risk factor for severe Covid-19 outcomes, less attention has been paid to how being classified as a high-risk group affects individuals' health perceptions. Interestingly, 69-year-olds' perceptions did not change significantly between the two years, while 70-year-olds perceived their health status to be worse.

“Perhaps the focus on over-70s meant that those aged 69 felt that the message was not relevant to them - even though they were only a year younger,” says Charlotta Mellander.

How authorities communicate about health is important

The study's findings show that public health strategies can have unintended consequences.

The research study does not aim to evaluate whether Sweden’s strategy during the pandemic was a good or bad, rather, the researchers want to show that the Swedish Covid-19 strategy may have affected how older people perceived their own health and that many older people may have perceived their health as worse than it really was.

“How you communicate about health seems to be very important. If you are told that you are vulnerable, you may also perceive yourself as more vulnerable. It is therefore important to be aware that health communication can have different effects depending on how the message is packaged,” says Charlotta Mellander.

Link to the study in full. External link, opens in new window.