# Occupational Health Psychology Training

> **NIH ALLCDC T03** · UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT STORRS · 2022 · $150,000

## Abstract

The Occupational Health Psychology (OHP) graduate training program at the University of Connecticut
(UConn) is designed to recruit and train highly qualified and diverse graduate students from areas of
psychology, public health and nursing to become Ph.D. researchers capable of conducting multi-disciplinary
and trans-disciplinary research focusing on the behavioral aspects of occupational health. A number of
occupational trends (e.g., downsizing, contingent labor and long work hours, telework) have propelled the need
for studies on OHP. OHP is concerned with the broad range of exposures and mechanisms that affect the
quality of working life and the responses of workers, such as how individual psychological attributes interact
with job content and work organization as well as organizational policies and practices. OHP research and
practice explores interventions targeting the work environment as well as the individual to create healthier
workplaces and organizations, and to improve the capacity of workers to protect their safety and health and
also to maximize their overall effectiveness and sense of wellbeing. As such, OHP fits many of the strategic
goals of the NIOSH Total Worker Health® initiative.
Trainees are recruited from UConn's I/O doctoral program, which is the only one of its kind in the New England
states, making it possible to recruit stellar students for this training. Trainees learn how to contribute to the
OHP knowledge base and become highly capable at discovering and/or implementing new ways of maintaining
and promoting worker health and safety. The OHP concentration is integrated within the
Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology doctoral training program, which follows a scientist-practitioner
model. All trainees complete a graduate seminar that covers principles of behavioral science, ergonomics and
epidemiology and which requires development of a multidisciplinary research proposal. In addition, trainees
complete an additional required epidemiology course and minimally two elective graduate courses in
psychology and/or public health; research-wise, they complete minimally three credits of applied field or lab
research under the supervision of OHP faculty, master- and dissertation-level research, and participate in
faculty research labs. This combination of course content and applied research training is designed not only to
equip trainees with the necessary skills to address today's occupational health problems, but also to enable
them to introduce new concepts of work organization and workplace design for enhancing worker health and
productivity beyond current expectations, thus realizing the true potential of trans-disciplinary occupational
health research to meet both regional and national needs. Trainees get jobs in academia, industry, consulting
firms and governmental agencies. Students outside the I/O Psychology program can also elect to complete the
15-credit program to obtain a Graduate Certificate in OHP.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10441126
- **Project number:** 5T03OH008610-18
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT STORRS
- **Principal Investigator:** Vicki J Magley
- **Activity code:** T03 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** ALLCDC
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $150,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-07-01 → 2025-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10441126

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10441126, Occupational Health Psychology Training (5T03OH008610-18). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10441126. Licensed CC0.

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