Oregon Healthy Workforce Center

NIH RePORTER · ALLCDC · U19 · $1,397,056 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY The Oregon Healthy Workforce Center (OHWC) became the 4th NIOSH Total Worker Health® Center of Excellence in 2011. The Oregon Healthy Workforce Center (OHWC) is located at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) and directed by seasoned MPIs Hammer and Olson. The Center is represented by OHSU, Portland State University, and the University of Washington, and engages in multiple collaborations and partnerships, including with TWH Affiliates and other TWH Centers of Excellence. We provide outreach and education to OSHA Region 10 (Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Idaho) and have national and international impacts. We address TWH research, practice, policy, and capacity building in the NIOSH TWH priority areas of 1) Measuring Worker Well-Being; 2) TWH Outreach, Education, and Training; 3) Opioid and Other Substance Use Disorders in the Workplace; 4) Future of Work; 5) Healthy Work Design and Well-Being; and 6) Workplace Mental Health and Worker Well-Being. Our theme is Total Worker Health® intervention effectiveness and translation to advance safe and healthy work design. The NORA cross-sector of most relevance to our theme is Healthy Work Design and Well-being. The mission of the OHWC is to provide TWH outreach and education to our region while conducting research on interventions that impact workforce and population safety, health, mental health, and well-being. Our intervention effectiveness studies are informed by current research evidence, the hierarchy of controls applied to TWH, and relevant theoretical models appropriate for the specific problems and populations we address. As a Center with strong expertise in Occupational Health Psychology, our projects are informed largely by knowledge of psychosocial stressors and the understanding that work is a strong social determinant of health. We view the assessment and control of physical and psychological workplace hazards as the foundations for implementing expanded and integrated TWH approaches to workplace interventions. We address the NIOSH Strategic Goal 7: Promote safe and healthy work design and well-being. Our direction for 2021-2026 is to continue filling a critical gap in the TWH intervention field by demonstrating strong, effective TWH interventions as evidenced by large effect sizes, program sustainability, and continued development of partnerships to promote dissemination, implementation and translation into practice by our outstanding Outreach Core. We advance four new proposed research projects led by new and continuing PIs (Bowles, Huang, Hurtado/Lenhart, and Olson). These include one large randomized controlled trial of an intervention to reduce burnout and improve well- being among health care workers; one large assessment of a natural intervention evaluating the impact of work schedule changes on firefighters’ mental health and well-being; one large translational research project to extend our successful COMPASS intervention to address chronic pain among home care...

Key facts

NIH application ID
10467969
Project number
5U19OH010154-12
Recipient
OREGON HEALTH & SCIENCE UNIVERSITY
Principal Investigator
Ryan Olson
Activity code
U19
Funding institute
ALLCDC
Fiscal year
2022
Award amount
$1,397,056
Award type
5
Project period
2021-09-01 → 2026-06-30