Cyber whistleblowing pivotal in ensuring corporate transparency and accountability in the IoT era

Whistle-blowing isn’t a new phenomenon, and has been recognized and protected under SOX, GLBA, Federal and State laws, as well as industry-specific regulatory frameworks. The Dodd-Frank Act has ensured additional protections for corporate officers who come forward with evidence of misconduct or wrongdoing, and created financial incentives for whistleblowers to report securities violations and fraud.

You may be aware of a recent decision by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in FTC v. Wyndham Resorts, which affirmed FTC’s standing as a Federal cyber enforcer under the Court’s intentionally broad – and unanimous – interpretation of the “fair trade” doctrine. What this means is that the FTC will increase its scrutiny of cyber security issues which affect US commerce and involve US consumers, surely to add to its list of approximately 50 recent enforcement actions taken against a variety of firms thus far.

However, FTC can only act upon known issues. A breach affecting millions of consumers, such as the Wyndham case or the Target and Home Depot incidents, comes into FTC’s view only after the proverbial horse has left the barn. While FTC seeks to encourage responsible behavior through punitive action meant to act as a deterrent for the rest of the field, the retroactive nature of its action leaves much to be desired on the preventive side of the equation.

Despite a positive step in the right direction, the Commission’s post hoc enforcement scope creates a potential incentive for firms to conceal information security breaches at all costs in a bid to prevent additional scrutiny and likely punishment for failure to do adequately secure their information operations. In many cases, the firms are successful. As reported in the New York Times, a massive breach of a major industrial automation firm shortly after its $2-billion acquisition went unreported to the markets and regulators, remaining under wraps until a confidential customer memo was leaked to a well-known security blogger.

Wrapped in non-disclosure agreements and contract confidentiality clauses, manufacturers get to operate in secrecy, largely making the public disclosure of a breach a choice rather than an obligation (in cases not involving regulated consumer data such as credit cards and PII).

Transparency is difficult to come by in a field cloaked in what I call the “Three M’s” of cyber security: myth, mystique, and mystery. Confidentiality for confidentiality’s sake prevails throughout corporate organizations, stifling information sharing, discovery, and open debate – internal or external, – on cyber deficiencies and vulnerabilities.

CEO’s don’t want to hear about problems which they would be compelled to solve – if they actually heard about them. Integrity of internal controls, after all, is a serious matter well within the regulatory purview of the SEC. The logical answer, in the unscrupulous organizations at least, becomes rather obvious: keep the CEO and the Board from hearing about cyber issues they’d be forced to fix. With information security, that’s all too easy given the inherent complexity and difficulty in assessing the true state of cyber posture and maturity in global organizations.

This obfuscation doesn’t have to appear all that malicious, either. A simple omission, a confused statistic, an “honest mistake” in reporting threat or vulnerability data – all plausible enough to filter the information about known or suspected deficiencies in the enterprise security program.

How do we pierce this veil of corporate secrecy and obfuscation, designed to immunize and absolve the power structure while allowing cyber negligence to remain the accepted status quo? If internal reporting is suppressed, and those who speak out find themselves ostracized – or worse, – what channels are available for communicating internal issues tantamount to corporate misconduct and malfeasance?

The answer: Whistleblowing.

Encouraging and protecting those who come forward is essential to the functioning of markets and societies. Transparency, Integrity, and trust are non-negotiable. As our world continues to become “smarter”, more connected, more integrated, as our transactions become more distributed and rapid, as machine learning and automation become more mainstream by the day – it is fundamental we as consumers, and the regulators on our behalf, insist on total integrity and trustworthiness on the part of those who seek to populate our world with “smart” machines.

The manufacturers and suppliers competing for the lucrative space on our wrists, in our pockets, our kitchens, cars, and office buildings, must prove to us their technologies are safe, secure, and resilient before we allow them to take over our lives to the tune of 50 billion connected devices projected to surround us by the year 2020 (Gartner).

Whistleblowers are crucial in ensuring that no matter how complex an organization, how powerful or aloof the management, or how lucrative the business venture – consumers get to know the truth, and to make their choice in the marketplace based not only on the features of a product or service, but its maker’s trustworthiness and integrity.

Cyber whistleblowers have a pivotal role to play in the upcoming battle to connect our world. Let us encourage them and protect them.

In a recent article in CIO Magazine, the nation’s premier whistleblower attorney Debra S. Katz of Katz Marshall Banks provides an overview of the unique challenges faced by cyber whistleblowers, and the dangers for companies who retaliate against them:

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On ’60 Minutes,’ Donald Trump Accidentally Proposes Radical Reform Of U.S. Healthcare

In an interview with 60 Minutes, America’s most-watched television news magazine,Donald Trump, America’s most-watched presidential candidate, basically just promised that he can defy gravity.

I’m not talking about his vow that he could reduce taxes on the middle class — for some people, rates would go down to zero! — and corporations and pay for it by going afterWall Street fat cats and growing the economy. I’ll leave the plausibility of that to others. I’m talking about Trump’s faster treatment of the way he would repeal and replace President Barack Obama’s signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

Trumps assurance, repeated again: he will make sure that every person in the country has health insurance, and will do so in a way that lowers rates for most Americans. And, he claims, he would do this in a way that actually lowers costs over the long term. In order to help the poorest 25% of the population, Trump said, he’d “make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people.”

Sounds great. Except that’s what Medicaid, the program that already exists to take care of the poor, already does. It drives a hard bargain, and, as a result, 56% of psychiatrists and 40% of orthopedic surgeons don’t accept Medicaid patients. How does Trump expect to drive a harder bargain?

And as for the rest of the market, as my colleague Bruce Japsen writes, Trump is describing something very much like Obamacare, which he says is “a disaster.” Trump’s words: “[I]t’s going to be a private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition with lots of competitors with great companies and they can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have everything.”

This is already what’s supposed to be happening with Obamacare. But Trump’s version sounds, well, bigger. The Obamacare exchanges, remember, apply to a small sliver of the insurance market: those people who do not get insurance from their employers and do not qualify for Medicaid or Medicare. Trump seems to be describing a much bigger system where people purchase their own private plans.

We know that he’s a big believer in competition. In a far more detailed description of Trump’s health plan that his campaign gave to Forbes contributor Dan Diamond, Trump placed a great deal of confidence in the idea that getting rid of state barriers to insurance would result in more competition. Actually, as Diamond explained, it might allow insurance companies to evade regulation, because insurers are regulated at the state level.

As Obama did (remember “you can keep your plan”?), Trump ignores the fact that the only way insurers can control costs is to choose which doctors you can go to, which medicines you can take, and where you can get your surgery. That’s what forces hospitals and doctors and drug companies to agree to lower prices: the knowledge that they’ll lose business if they don’t make a deal.

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It’s Time Health-Care Providers Listen to Their Customers

LEAH BINDER: Retirees in South Florida like to eat dinner early. Many line up for “early bird specials” by 4 p.m.

A year ago, a senior-citizen friend of mine was admitted to a hospital there.

“I should have listened to my neighbors and never come to this place,” my friend complained. What disappointed her so much about the hospital? Was it a cleanliness problem, rude staff, or a high infection rate?

No, she liked the hospital overall—and indeed it’s a high performer on standard indicators of quality. The hospital’s fatal flaw: dinner wasn’t served until 7 p.m.

I actually had the opportunity to speak to the chief executive of that hospital, who said he’d heard similar feedback but it wasn’t a big issue on his radar.

This was surprising to me. Shouldn’t customers dominate the executive’s radar?

Health care has virtually no tradition of considering the perspective of patients as mission-critical. That’s because in health care, the payment system creates confusion about who the customer really is: the patient or the payer? Patients often make different demands than health plans or Medicare. Providers meet the needs of both, but the check-writer tends to come first.

Providers also dismiss the perspective of patients because they aren’t experts in clinical medicine, or in the scientific principles of defining and measuring high quality care. The timing of dinner doesn’t appear in medical textbooks as an evidence-based best practice.

Yet serving dinner three hours late isn’t only a convenience issue for patients—though convenience matters when a hospital stay costs more than a suite at the Four Seasons. In fact, it has significant clinical ramifications for highly vulnerable inpatients. Adequate nutrition is important to the outcome of any treatment patients receive at the hospital. So in this case, the failure to put a priority on patient preference was more than a public-relations problem, it was a quality problem and a business problem. Listening to patients would solve it at all levels.

Luckily, times are changing. Nowadays, patients pay more of their bills out of pocket, and the expectations of the Internet generation put increasing pressure on health systems to respond to consumer demands in real time. The gap between payer and patient is closing.

Today, there’s a new buzzword in the industry: “patient-reported outcomes,” and it even comes with its own acronym (PRO). Hospitals are now required to conduct standardized patient surveys following discharge, and their payment from Medicare is partially based on those results.

We are also seeing innovative ways to solicit patient feedback, such as cellphone surveys and social media. Hospitals and health plans are using this data systematically to track consumer comment as a way to gauge overall quality of care. Policy makers and purchasers are increasingly incorporating patient reported outcomes into the criteria for payment and ratings of hospitals and physicians.

Leadership is taking note: The hospital industry invented a new job, the “chief experience officer,” to monitor patient feedback and drive change accordingly. Many hospitals have formed patient and family advisory committees that advise on a wide variety of operational and clinical issues.

Private-sector employers are also getting in on the action. A white paper by the Pacific Business Group on Health made a call for robust integration of patient perspectives into all phases of quality improvement and business purchasing decisions.

Outside of health care, pivoting your priorities to your customer is hardly a breakthrough. But in health care this is the new vanguard.

It’s a welcome departure from the tradition of keeping patients off the radar.

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Emergency responders on the front lines of a mental health crisis

Maine emergency responders learning patience and understanding are critical to saving lives.

It had all the elements of a situation that could end badly.

The man had a history of mental health problems, and in the wee hours of one morning last year he seemed out of touch with reality. His mother decided he needed to go to the hospital, now. He decided he wasn’t going anywhere.

She called 911.

Eric Samson, then a deputy with the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department, responded with another deputy. Samson had been trained to deal with someone who was mentally ill.

Listen. Don’t discount the other person’s thoughts or feelings. De-escalate.

“He was resistant, actively resistant, didn’t really feel the need for law enforcement . . . I had remembered the technique of how to deal just verbally,” Samson said. “He was saying things to me that did not make sense. But I responded with asking him to explain, and I just waited for that opportunity through the conversation, accepting what he was saying was reality and talking to him about that. He brought up how he wants to help law enforcement. So I explained, ‘Well, if you want to help us, for us to be able to do our jobs we need you to come with us. And if you’re willing to come with us, that would be a great help.'”

The night ended with him willingly going to the hospital.

Samson, now Androscoggin County sheriff, still thinks about that success.

“Everything turned from him sitting in a chair refusing to go, and something that could have ended up (with police ordering) ‘You’re going,’ to (the man saying) ‘OK! Let’s go,'” Samson said.

It’s the kind of call Maine’s first responders often get: Help someone who is mentally ill or in crisis.

They’re complex situations that can escalate quickly, sometimes with the potential for violence, risking the lives of both first responders and the person needing help.

Mental health advocates and mentally ill Mainers say first responders in Maine tend to handle such calls well, with sensitivity, a sense of calm and knowledge.

Though both first responders and advocates say more can always be done.

Samson, for one, has started sending his officers to a weeklong training program run by the Maine chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI. One of his first volunteers was the deputy who went with him during that middle-of-the-night call last year.

“He said ‘I want to go’ because he saw,” Samson said.

‘We run into it every day’

First responders — including dispatchers, police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel — get involved with an emergency call at the beginning. Their job is to gather information, stabilize the situation and get help to the person who needs it.

Any call can go badly, whether it involves someone who has mental health problems or not. And the vast majority of people who are mentally ill aren’t violent. But calls that involve someone who is in crisis or struggles with mental illness can be particularly tricky to handle because the person may not want help, may not understand what’s going on, may be difficult to talk to or may have had a bad experience that makes going to the hospital or dealing with police anxiety-provoking.

“You can’t paint mental health with just a single brush. It’s a very complex situation,” said Jay Bradshaw, who recently retired after years heading Maine EMS, the emergency medical services arm of the Maine Department of Public Safety. “Sometimes the person’s mental health may need just a comforting voice of somebody who’s calm and near. That’s one thing. On the other end of the spectrum you may have somebody who has serious psychological, behavioral challenges that require reaching out to, perhaps, law enforcement.”

First responders say that when they encounter people who are mentally ill or in crisis, often those people are hallucinating, feeling anxious or depressed, having a panic attack, considering killing themselves or no longer taking care of themselves. Drugs and alcohol exacerbate the situation.

Sometimes other issues — like autism, a diabetic crisis or a bad reaction to medication — can resemble a mental health problem.

“There’s any number of possibilities that fall into that realm of behavioral emergency,” said Auburn Fire Chief Frank Roma, whose department handles both fire and medical calls. “We respond to behavioral emergencies on a fairly frequent basis . . . certainly at least weekly.”

About 51,000 Maine adults and 13,000 children have a serious mental health issue, according to a 2010 NAMI state fact sheet. That doesn’t include Mainers who have a less severe mental health issue or who will find themselves in a sudden crisis.

“The reality is that you don’t know when the issue is going to matter to you until it matters to you an incredible amount,” said Jenna Mehnert, executive director of NAMI Maine. “It has no racial, no socio-economic, no educational barrier. Mental health challenges touch everybody.”

First responders say they handle more mental health issues now than in decades past. Many believe that’s because the state — and the country — began shifting away from institutions in the 1990s, instead favoring outpatient care, which keeps people in their communities and, sometimes, in the path of first responders. Some say the long-running shortage of short-term and long-term psychiatric beds has also caused patients to cycle in and out of emergency care, stabilizing only for a short time before they need help again.

Whatever the reason, it’s become common to get calls involving someone with mental health issues.

“We run into it every day, from cars that we stop to well-being checks,” said Maine State Police Chief Robert Williams. “Mental illness or mental health is a huge problem facing law enforcement today. I read one study that said 80 percent of people we come in contact with has a mental illness. That seems kind of high, but we do deal with it a lot.”

Maine first responders have long been looking at ways to deal with people who are mentally ill or in crisis.

In 1996, after a mentally ill man killed two elderly nuns and injured two others in a Waterville chapel, police there began partnering with local mental health agency Crisis & Counseling Centers, having mental health workers ride along during some shifts. The program has since been adopted by a number of other police departments in Maine, including Augusta earlier this year.

In the early 2000s, Laurie Cyr-Martel, an experienced mental health worker, served as a dedicated crisis intervention officer tasked with working scenes with the Lewiston Police Department. She also wrote a book on dealing with people in crisis — “Responding to Emotionally Disturbed Persons: a Manual for Law Enforcement Personnel.”

Also in the early 2000s, NAMI Maine began offering Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training to first responders and others. The 40-hour, weeklong course teaches them how to calm, contain and intervene in situations, and introduces them to people who have mental health problems so they can better understand the point of view of someone on the other end of a call.

NAMI Maine later added a more basic 8-hour “Mental Health First Aid” course for those who couldn’t commit to a full week of training.

Although many consider NAMI’s courses to be “the gold standard,” some first responders’ groups have their own specialized training.

“There’s a handling-suicidal-callers class that, depending on availability and funds, we’ll send students to,” said Phyllis Gamache, director for Lewiston-Auburn’s 911 communications center. “It’s good for new people who haven’t been exposed to a great deal. It’s nerve wracking. There’s a lot of responsibility for somebody who’s only been on the job for six months, or even three years, to have the responsibility to talk to someone who’s suicidal.”

Advocates, first responders and people with mental health issues say the training efforts have helped.

“They make you feel real comfortable,” said Judy Binnette, 66, of Auburn, who deals with anxiety, depression and PTSD and has had to call 911 for chest pains. “They try to calm you down so that you’re not getting overworked and getting more panicky and stuff. They’re really calm and very thoughtful with you.”

Paul Gauvreau, board chairman of Tri-County Mental Health Services in Lewiston and a Maine assistant attorney general who deals with involuntary hospital commitments, tends to hear about the most harrowing situations — like, recently, the man who was “obviously thought disordered” and found lying asleep on Route 202 in Greene. Police got him to the hospital without incident.

“It’s pretty stunning. There’s no other way to say it. People who are severely impaired put themselves in remarkable situations,” Gauvreau said. “I’m always impressed with the professionalism of first responders who go out of their way to make sure people are brought in to a secure setting.”

Attitudes have changed, too.

“The story I like to tell is when I first started at the (Lewiston) PD, the comments were ‘Oh, they’re just crazy or whacked out,'” said Cyr-Martel. “And then like 2006, 2008, I’d get officers saying, ‘Laurie, I think they’re de-compensating.’ It’s night and day.”

But while first responders, advocates and others agree that things have improved, they also say it could always be better.

Often, “better” starts with more training.

Listen

Although a few Maine departments have all or almost-all of their first responders CIT trained, most don’t. The program is free through NAMI Maine, but departments have to replace the trainee on the job for a week — often paying overtime — and that can be a financial barrier. It can also be difficult to push crisis training when departments have other training they need to prioritize, too.

And some first responders don’t know special training is available.

“It’s in the course of emergency training that you do (mental health training), but it’s just so cursory that it doesn’t give you anything in depth other than the fact that yes, this is mental illness, and this is what you shouldn’t do rather than what you should do,” said Donald Wormell, supervisor for United Ambulance Service in Lewiston. “Wouldn’t anyone want more training?”

Last year, United handled about 20,000 calls for help, 574 of them classified as “psychiatric, abnormal behavior or suicide attempt.”

When it comes to police, Mehnert at NAMI Maine said she’d like to see half of Maine’s officers go through the 40-hour CIT session.

State Rep. Richard Malaby, R-Hancock, would have been happy with 20 percent.

During the last legislative session, he introduced a bill that would have required at least 20 percent of officers in municipal and sheriff’s departments be CIT trained by 2017. The bill died in committee. Malaby wasn’t surprised.

“I knew that wouldn’t happen, to be frank. Nonetheless, I pushed the issue,” he said. “But I did end up with a good compromise by working with the head of the police academy.”

Starting this year, the Maine Criminal Justice Academy — which trains most law enforcement officers in the state, including wardens, marine patrol, municipal and state police — will require that all of its students take NAMI Maine’s 8-hour Mental Health First Aid class.

“Today, that’s kind of a critical piece of training law enforcement officers,” said training coordinator David Tyrol of crisis training.

The academy graduates 100 to 120 people a year. Previously, students got seven hours of NAMI’s time, but that was largely focused on involuntary commitment. They’ll now receive that information in three hours rather than seven.

Mental Health First Aid is not as intensive as the weeklong CIT, but advocates say it will be a good start for students who have little-to-no experience in the field. And they like the fact that training all academy students will mean that, eventually, virtually all Maine police will be trained.

Some departments aren’t waiting for students to graduate and move up through the ranks.

Samson, the Androscoggin County Sheriff, started putting his deputies through CIT this year and has spoken with NAMI Maine about designing training geared specifically toward his corrections officers.

Samson was trained in the 1990s and now serves as a board member for Tri-County Mental Health Services in Lewiston. His goal: train all the officers he’s responsible for.

As a deputy, he repeatedly saw how well his crisis training worked — including, two or three years ago, when a Wales woman got upset because she believed people were talking to her through her ceiling and wouldn’t leave her alone.

Rather than dismiss her claims and leave, Samson was trained to stay and listen. When the woman mentioned she had a mental health case worker, Samson called the worker and got her help.

“You see (training) is successful and you say, ‘This is something more people need,'” he said.

More ideas being tried

Some first responders are trying new things, in addition to training.

The Auburn Fire Department last year started offering an emergency registry for families with autistic children so first responders will know, for example, not to use lights and sirens because that will upset the child more. Autism isn’t a mental health issue, but someone with autism can fall into the same “behavioral emergency”category.

So far, about a half-dozen families have signed up. The Lewiston Fire Department is considering something similar.

The Maine State Police, meanwhile, is creating partnerships aimed at responding to mental health issues before they escalate.

The agency has some of the most well-trained first responders in the state, but its chief lamented that some situations still require force.

“I want to make sure the perception isn’t that when law enforcement gets called to somebody who’s in a mental health crisis that our first instinct is to shoot them, because that’s what we hear all the time,” Williams said. “In the last year or so, state police have been involved in two or three shootings where the person has had mental illnesses and that’s all we hear — why didn’t you have more training to de-escalate, why didn’t you this, why didn’t you that? Well, the bottom line is, in those situations where we had to use deadly force, we had to use deadly force.”

His officers often meet people who have obvious mental health issues; they’ve interacted with people who believe someone snuck into their house through an electrical outlet, people who labeled everything in their home with the date they first saw it — but there’s nothing for the police to do. Those Mainers may have mental health problems, but they haven’t committed a crime, they don’t want to hurt themselves or someone else, and they aren’t posing a danger.

However, mental health problems can intensify. One day police can’t do anything, the next day that person is in crisis.

“We want to try to prevent the case where nothing gets done — we’ve been there a dozen times and then the person escalates where the police have to intervene. If there’s a way to prevent that, we want to do that,” Williams said.

So the Maine State Police has started working on a new partnership with mental health providers across the state to connect people who have mental health issues with professionals who can help.

“We can refer them, then we can call that agency and tell them, ‘You need to do a follow-up on these people,'” he said.

Williams knows it won’t always work. Some people will still refuse help. But it’s something more.

“At least the people involved can say, ‘You know what? These are the things we did to try and fix this,'” he said.

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Students Love the Variety: Health and Wellness Fair

Students and faculty learned about health awareness and promotion at the annual Health and Wellness Fair last Tuesday.

The event, hosted by Student Health and Wellness and Healthy for Life, was held in Room 401 of the Student Union from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Scott Thompson, Student Health and Wellness Administrator, expressed Student Health and Wellness’s goal for the event.

“The overall purpose is blending student health and employee health. It covers a lot of health promotion and prevention as well as health awareness,” Thompson said. “It’s just a mish-mosh of all good health prevention and promotion needs that people don’t often think about.”

The booths catered to both students and faculty, providing information concerning the promotion of health, preventative health practices and awareness.

One of these booths represented Be the Match, a national registry for bone marrow donors. Students and faculty interested in donating could do so there, simply by filling out an application and medical survey. The application also required each applicant to take mouth swabs so their DNA could be matched with a recipient. Be the Match hopes to raise the number of registered donors, helping patients fighting leukemia, aplastic anemia and sickle cell find positive matches.

The Office of Student Involvement hosted a booth promoting the Kangaroo Food Pantry, a recent program sponsored by UMKC. The Kangaroo Food Pantry is a food pantry available exclusively to students, faculty and staff located at 4825 Troost Ave.. The pantry seeks to help students having difficulty paying for food in addition to school expenses. The booth also hosted sign-ups for volunteers seeking to get involved with work at the pantry, as well as collecting donations around campus.

El-Centro, a non-profit based in Kansas City, Kan., attended the event as well. El-Centro offers bilingual services concerning financial, health and medical applications. They also seek to assist students with health insurance—enrolling in Health Marketplace Plans and avoiding tax penalties incurred for a lack of health insurance. El-Centro also provides emergency assistance with medicine, glasses prescriptions, SNAP or food stamps and disability applications. They are also a Medicine Cabinet site, providing one-time emergency assistance for the uninsured with the filling of medication and purchasing of medical equipment.

Sodexo Dining Services, Weight Watchers, AARP, Express Scrips, UMKC Women’s Center, Cleveland Chiropractic College and The Transgender Institute were among the other organizations in attendance. UMKC also hosted booths concerning the Swinney Recreation Center, Financial Aid and Counseling among others.

UMKC student Rian Sanders enjoyed the variety of booths that filled the room..

“I love it,” Sanders said. “I think it’s really interesting. I like how it’s a good mix of health—mind, body, physical. I like it, I think it’s beneficial.”

Much like Sanders, UMKC student Jasmine Donley enjoyed the many booths in attendance.

“I actually really love it because I’m a health care major, and being able to access the resources on campus is really a good opportunity for me to get more into my major,” Donley said. “And to find out what I can do in terms of community and outreach programs, opportunities to help out with different organizations.”

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Breast cancer survivors dance back to health

Could Delaying Retirement Be Great For Your Health?

He’s been at it for 45 years. Wake up before 2 a.m. Turn on the fryer. And have the glazed doughnuts and peanut-topped coffeecakes ready by 6 a.m.

Yup, Michael Doucleff Sr. is a baker and small-business owner in Alton, Ill.

At at age 70, he doesn’t show many signs of slowing down. He’s still working more than 40 hours a week, still carrying 50-pound bags of flour upstairs from the basement.

“You’ve got to wake up sometime in the morning — might as well have a purpose,” Doucleff says. “I think I still contribute to society. For me, that’s enjoyable.”

Despite having an autoimmune disease, Doucleff is in pretty good shape. No heart disease. No diabetes. And sharp as a tack.

Doucleff is my father-in-law. And in our family, he’s one of the healthiest for his age — and one of the hardest workers.

That might not be a coincidence.

A study published Thursday in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease finds that working in one’s 60s and 70s is associated with better physical and mental health.

“There’s something about the aging process — that if you stay working, then you stay hardy,” says University of Miami epidemiologist Alberto Caban-Martinez, who contributed to the study.

Caban-Martinez and his colleagues analyzed survey data from more than 85,000 adults age 65 and older. (The mean age was around 75.) In general, people who kept working were nearly three times as likely to report being in good health than those who had retired.

Compared with white-collar workers, blue-collar workers still on the job were 15 percent less likely to report multiple chronic diseases, like heart disease, diabetes and cancer. And all types of workers reported better mental health, compared with those who were retired or unemployed.

“Not to encourage workaholics, but there’s something to be said about part-time or full-time work,” Caban-Martinez says. “And there’s not much difference whether you’re in the service sector or you’re a white-collar worker.”

But the study does come with a big caveat. It couldn’t determine whether working leads to good health or if it’s good health that keeps people working.

“It’s kind of the chicken or egg problem,” Caban-Martinez says. “Maybe poor physical health is not allowing people to be in the workforce.”

Still, other research has shown that being active and socially engaged helps prevent problems as we age, Caban-Martinez says. “Maybe the workplace is giving you the physical activity that keeps you mentally and physically healthy.”

And it likely doesn’t take much, he says. Getting up early and making sure the bakery is open and running smoothly is certainly enough.

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