# Exploring the Role of Client Death Support in Home Care Workers' Grief, Stress, and Job Satisfaction

> **NIH ALLCDC K01** · GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND HEALTH POLICY · 2020 · $108,000

## Abstract

The purpose of this Mentored Research Scientist Development Award (K01) is to help me become an
independent occupational health researcher who uses multidisciplinary social science methods to conduct
intervention research benefitting low-income workers; in this case, home care workers (HCWs). Protecting and
promoting the health of the large and rapidly expanding population of HCWs is essential to our health system's
ability to provide needed care. One persistent, unavoidable, and unaddressed stressor for this population is
client death. The proposed study will use an in-depth, multimethod study design to describe HCWs' sources
and types of support used after client death; to test the hypotheses that client death support is associated with
reduced grief distress, reduced perceived stress, and increased job satisfaction; and to develop feasible
workplace-based intervention to increase client death support. Analyses will focus on a diverse sample of
English-speaking HCWs recruited from two large home care agencies in New York City taking different
approaches to client death support. This research will provide insight into which aspects of client death support
are associated with reduced grief and stress, and increased job satisfaction, and thus is an important step
toward a long-term goal of reducing occupational stress and turnover among HCWs. The training from this K01
will allow me to 1) develop expertise in theories of occupational stress, 2) acquire skills in occupational
epidemiology and biostatistics, 3) develop an in-depth understanding of grief theories, and 4) acquire skills in
psychometrics and factor analysis. My career development plan includes specific coursework, conferences,
directed readings, seminars, hands-on practica, and tailored mentoring with a team comprised of experts in
home care labor, grief, work stress, occupational epidemiology, factor analysis, and regression. This project is
strongly aligned with NIOSH's priorities in the Healthcare and Social Assistance sector, which encourages
proposals focused on home settings, and the Healthy Work Design and Well-Being cross-sector (specifically,
Strategic Goal 1 for Work Organization and Stress Related Disorders). This project also aligns with NIOSH's
R2P Initiative in that it partners with home care agencies and actively seeks to translate research findings into
feasible intervention ideas, with input from key stakeholders. My primary goal for this research is to lay a solid
foundation for a future R01 to develop and evaluate a multifaceted client death support intervention to reduce
HCW grief and stress and increase job satisfaction. Outputs will include at least 5 peer-reviewed articles, at
least 3 conference presentations, and new measures of client death support. Intermediate outcomes will
include citations in the literature, as well as supporting the efforts of employer agencies, unions, and
researchers to implement the intervention ideas developed. The new skills and exper...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9981552
- **Project number:** 5K01OH011645-02
- **Recipient organization:** GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND HEALTH POLICY
- **Principal Investigator:** Emma Tsui
- **Activity code:** K01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** ALLCDC
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $108,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-01 → 2021-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9981552

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9981552, Exploring the Role of Client Death Support in Home Care Workers' Grief, Stress, and Job Satisfaction (5K01OH011645-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9981552. Licensed CC0.

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