Centers of Excellence for Total Worker Health^®

Based at the University of California, San Francisco, the goal of CALL is to describe and mitigate the health impacts of emergent working conditions, with a special emphasis on populations that have been economically or socially marginalized. The Center focuses on alternative work arrangements, contingent forms of employment, the decreasing quality of work and the link between emergent work conditions and health outcomes. CALL conducts basic/etiologic, surveillance, translation, and intervention research focused on TWH outreach, education, and training, measures of worker well-being, the Future of Work, healthy work-design, and mental health. CALL aims to address the NIOSH program cross-sector areas of Hearing Loss Prevention, Immune, Infectious and Dermal Disease Prevention, Musculoskeletal Health, Respiratory Health, Traumatic Injury Prevention and Healthy Work Design and Well-Being. Center activities focus on workers in the Construction, Healthcare & Social Assistance, Manufacturing, Oil and Gas Extraction, Public Safety, Services, and Transportation, Warehousing and Utilities sectors.

Currently the center is conducting  three research projects: Impact of Emergent Working Conditions on the Health of Working Age Californians, Inequality in Job Conditions in the Service Sector, and California Artificial Stone and Silicosis Project.

2022 Annual Report

Located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the overall mission for the Center is to help advance the NIOSH goal of protecting and advancing the safety, health, and well-being of the diverse population of workers in our nation. This Center serves essential workers and other groups placed at higher risk of negative workplace health and well-being outcomes. These workers include grocery store employees, first responders, health care workers, along with home care and childcare workers – many of whom are racial and ethnic minorities and in low-wage, low-control and high-hazard jobs. The Center will focus on topics related to mental health and wellbeing and conduct innovative, multidisciplinary TWH research and interventions, outreach and education, and evaluation activities in these areas.

The Carolina Center for Healthy Work Design’s goals: 1) creating new TWH interventions that are adopted by workers and worksites, 2) developing timely pilot projects to support future research, 3) producing outreach materials to communicate TWH strategies and concepts to workers and employers, including websites, digital media, social media and trainings, 4) identifying effective dissemination channels, 5) cultivating new partners and collaborators in support of worker health, 6) conducting needs assessments of regional businesses and worker populations, 7) publishing and presenting research, and 8) training new researchers in the field of TWH.

Based at the Colorado School of Public Health, the CHWE’s mission is to advance the overall safety, health, and well-being of workers. The Center conducts TWH research, intervention, and dissemination projects performed primarily in the Rocky Mountain Region and targeting workers and workplaces at the highest risk of fatality, injury, and illness.

CHWE’s team includes faculty and staff from the University of Colorado, Colorado School of Public Health, and Colorado State University. The Center is currently performing a five-year study that examines the employment experience of low-income, Latino men newly diagnosed with cancer. The project will test a clinical-based TWH intervention to improve patients’ work and health outcomes during cancer therapy. The Center is working to address behavioral health for farm workers and owners in the San Luis Valley of southern rural Colorado. CHWE is also adapting and testing a workforce mental health intervention with emergency preparedness programs in Pre-K-8 schools in Colorado.

Health Links™, one of CHWE’s longstanding TWH interventions, is a national advising and certification program that focuses on helping organizations achieve TWH. The Center offers two separate certificates in TWH — each are 15-credit hour academic programs designed to help graduate students and practicing professionals gain the knowledge and skills they need to serve as TWH leaders within organizations and communities. CHWE also offers support for research to practice community and academic projects that address regional priorities through its Pilot Projects Program. This program attracts junior investigators and advances their careers in the occupational safety and health field.

CPH-NEW is a collaboration between University of Connecticut and University of Massachusetts Lowell that is dedicated to research, policy, and practice to achieve improved health, safety, and well-being for all working people. The Center continues to extend worker-centered approaches to TWH into new occupational settings and for new health challenges. It aims to better engage workers in organizational decision-making that advances worker well-being. CPH-NEW conducts research on challenges, opportunities, strategies, benefits, and costs of integrated TWH-related programs to promote workforce health, safety, and well-being. It also disseminates cutting-edge TWH concepts, research findings, and program materials, develops policy recommendations, and builds the capacity of professionals and organizations to implement TWH programs and policies.

Its research includes studies that develop and evaluate TWH interventions to 1) improve the mental well-being of teachers, with a focus on work-life balance, burnout, and work engagement and 2) promote the health and safety of healthcare workers, with a focus on sustainability and union involvement in implementation processes (Safety & Health Through Integrated, Facilitated Teams).

CPH-NEW also conducts research focused on professional education programs designed to integrate TWH concepts into employer crisis preparation and planning efforts.  The Center aims to show that worker-centered approaches that involve workers in the design, implementation, and evaluation of organizational interventions can be impactful, innovative, and efficient to improve the safety, health, and well-being of the U.S. workforce.

2022 University of Connecticut Annual Report

2022 Mass Lowell Annual Report

The Healthier Workforce Center of the Midwest serves Federal Region VII (Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri). This predominantly rural region disproportionately suffers from higher rates of occupational injury and illness and unhealthy behaviors compared to other parts of the country. The Center’s interdisciplinary team addresses these burdens through basic and applied research, a participatory approach, and theory-driven educational and translational activities. The Center is a collaboration between the University of Iowa, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Kansas Medical Center, Penn State University, WorkWell Kansas, the Nebraska Safety Council, and the St. Louis Area Business Health Coalition.

Research projects include developing and implementing a training for supervisors to promote well-being among remote workers, translating and disseminating workplace opioid guidelines for the construction industry, determining the organizational factors that impact adoption of TWH in rural nursing homes, implementing a mental health and suicide prevention program for construction workers, and promoting capacity building of community and academic partners through a Pilot Grant program.

Recognizing the greater impact of organizational changes, the Center focuses not only on changes at the individual worker level, but also policies and programs to change work climate and culture. The Healthier Workforce Center addresses emerging issues and high-risk, high-need populations in employers of all sizes targeting goals in the NIOSH Strategic Plan: FYs 2019−2023 and priority populations addressing NIOSH Strategic Goal 7 (Promote safe and healthy work design and well-being) and goals in the NIOSH TWH Agenda.

2022 Annual Report

The overarching goal of the POE Center is to promote worker mental health and well-being through research, education, outreach, and evaluation activities that integrate the psychosocial, organizational, and environmental contexts of worker health. The POE Center is the Center of Excellence with an intentional focus on mental health and substance use prevention and treatment among workers. The Center will create online resources, fact sheets, guidance tools, mentoring activities, and training modules, along with hosting workshops, seminars/webinars, and an annual Symposium. It is also developing a Psychosocial, Organizational, Environmental Measurement Tool (POEM), with plans to provide pilot research funding, and produce research products, including publications and presentations from students, staff, and junior faculty at the Center.

Located at the Oregon Health & Science University, OHWC’s mission is to conduct TWH-themed research, outreach, education, and dissemination for workforce safety, health, and well-being in the Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA) Region 10 (Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Idaho). The focus of the Center is safe and healthy work design contributing to TWH intervention effectiveness and translation.

OHWC addresses TWH-related research, practice, policy, and capacity-building in the areas of measuring worker well-being, outreach, education, and training, opioid and other substance use disorders in the workplace, Future of Work, healthy work design and well-being, and workplace mental health. The Center aims to expand its portfolio of intervention research and evidence-based programs for improved work design and worker safety, health, and well-being for diverse workforces and industries. It also focuses on increasing partnerships with regional stakeholders, TWH Affiliates, and other Centers of Excellence, building capacity for TWH implementation among practitioners. These collaborations result in competencies for TWH education and research and increase opportunities for uptake and implementation of the Center’s research products through strategic knowledge dissemination and organizational consulting. Located in the Pacific Northwest, OHWC is a collaboration among Oregon Health & Science University, Portland State University, and University of Washington.

2022 Annual Report

The mission of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Center for Work, Health, & Wellbeing is to protect and promote the safety, health, and well-being of workers through integrated workplace policies, programs, and practices that foster safe and healthy conditions of work. The Center’s research targets the burden faced by workers in healthcare, warehousing, and construction industries. The Center focuses on five priorities in the NIOSH TWH Agenda through its activities:

Measuring Worker Well-being is the primary focus of the Thriving Workers, Thriving Workplaces Study. The Center’s Thriving from Work Questionnaire will be used in three research projects.

Workplace Mental Health and Worker Well-being in the Workplace is a unifying theme and a target outcome for each of the research projects.

The Future of Work has informed the Center’s expanded conceptual model and is operationalized in the current funding cycle by the sectors included, the working conditions targeted, and the outcomes studied.

Healthy Work Design and Well-being is addressed across the Center through a focus on conditions of work and on worker well-being as an outcome.

TWH Outreach, Education, and Training is accomplished through the Outreach Core by increasing the implementation and dissemination of TWH best practices and policies that benefit workers, employers, and other stakeholders.

The Center’s collective work contributes to the growing evidence of work conditions’ influence on worker safety, health, and well-being. It improves both understanding of disparities in worker health and well-being and recommendations to address disparities. This new knowledge informs future research and evidence-based recommendations to guide organizational and public policies. It also demonstrates best practices for TWH interventions, particularly in high-priority work settings.

The UIC Center for Healthy Work aims to identify and promote employment programs, practices, and policies that will improve worker and community health. Their vision is a Future of Work that promotes inclusive and equitable opportunities for healthy work, especially in precarious employment arrangements. The Center recognizes healthy work as a social and structural determinant of health, a human right, a pathway to advancing systemic change and racial justice, and a significant contributor to workforce well-being.

Using a transdisciplinary and participatory, applied, and racial justice–centered approach, the Center conducts research that produces evidence exploring work as a social and structural determinant of health and identifying actions to promote healthy work. Its research focuses on participatory action in collaboration with community and organizational partners to understand and address complex topics and focus on social or policy change. One current project, The Greater Lawndale Healthy Work project, explores community-level approaches to understand the nature of work and working conditions in two Chicago neighborhoods. Another project is partnering with a large employer and proposes to establish a systematic and quantitative framework for decision-making around efforts to improve workforce well-being that includes identification and mitigation of unmet social needs as well as diversity, equity and inclusion needs. Center-level outreach focuses on a strategic research translation agenda to widely disseminate TWH best-practices through multi-directional partner engagement and capacity building. Through its outreach, the Center creates networks that support healthy work through building and strengthening multidirectional collaboration and engagement across eco-social levels. Overall, the UIC Center for Healthy Work seeks to translate and share knowledge that promotes policies and practices, advancing the health and well-being of people employed in precarious jobs.

2022 Annual Report

Based at the University of Utah, the mission of U-POWER is to create a sustainable community of practice that changes the conditions of work and advances TWH through research and outreach. The integrating theme of U-POWER is the role of power in defining work conditions that create and sustain inequity and ill health among workers. The Center understands power as the ability to make what one wants to happen – a situation that occurs because of authority granted by relationships, policy, regulation, and through historical and current ideologies and norms that create and sustain inequality. Work equity refers to equity in who has access to safe, healthy work.

U-POWER community of practice shares concerns related to changing conditions of work and advances TWH concepts through innovative research, including translation research, outreach, and community engagement. U-POWER activities address issues relevant to TWH and work equity. The values of justice and fair treatment, community, rigor and relevance, transformation, and participatory decision-making guide the Center’s work.

2022 Annual Report