Total Worker Health^® Featured in the American Journal of Health Promotion

Dr. Laura Linnan, Professor and Director of the Carolina Center for Healthy Work Design, was spotlighted in an editorial feature published in the American Journal of Health Promotion (AJHP). She was interviewed by Dr. Paul Terry, Editor of AJHP, where she had an opportunity to talk about the benefits of Total Worker Health^® approaches for improving worker safety, health and well-being.    

Read More about Dr. Laura Linnan: 

• Professor of Health Behavior at the Gillings School of Global Public Health and Senior Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 
• Director, Carolina Center for Healthy Work Design and Worker Well-Being, one of 10 centers of excellence in a national network of Total Worker Health (“TWH”) centers funded by NIOSH. 
• Led (or co-led) more than 40 community-based intervention or evaluation trials with funding from multiple institutes at NIH, CDC, NIOSH and other foundations. 
• Served as PI of the Coordinating Center of the CDC-funded Workplace Health Research Network, where UNC was one of five other collaborating research centers, including Johns Hopkins, University of Minnesota, University of Washington, CUNY, and University of Illinois-Chicago.  

• Led the development, implementation, and analysis of two CDC-funded nationally representative employer surveys (2008 and 2016), the latest called the Workplace Health in America Survey, characterizing employer-based health promotion programs, policies and environmental supports. 
• Co-led “Carolina PROSPER,” a feasibility study (With MPI Leena Nylander-French) to evaluate the feasibility of using a TWH approach with small and medium size companies. 
• Co-led “CARE” (with MPI Dianne Ward) an NHLBI-funded R01 designed to assess interventions to improve childcare workers’ health. 
• Co-I of a NIHMD grant, with Shawn Kneipp as PI, to improve health and employment outcomes of welfare recipients returning to work by conducting manager training designed to reduce stigma and create supportive workplace conditions. 
•  Selected to receive Robert E. Bryan Public Service Award in recognition of outstanding engagement and service to the state of North Carolina. 

• Selected for the Mark Dundon Researcher Award from the Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO). 
• Selected as Editor-in Chief Paper of the Year Award and the Best Research of 2019 for “Results of the Workplace Health in America Survey.” 
• To read more about Dr. Laura Linnan, click here. 

Worker safety, health and well-being are top of mind for many employers and workers in this post-pandemic world.  This interview challenged the idea that asking workers to do a better job coping with current conditions and managing stress will be enough to improve worker safety, health, and well-being.  You can read more from the interview below and on Sage Journals.  

Some key highlights from the interview include:  

About the Centers of Excellence 

• All ten Centers of Excellence, including the Carolina Center for Healthy Work Design and Worker Well-Being, have required “cores” for planning & evaluation; outreach & education, and most have a pilot project program. In addition, all Centers were funded to conduct some specific research projects.  
• All ten Centers engage directly with workers and employers in their research, outreach and education efforts. While there is a great deal of variation across Centers in the types of workers, workplaces and work they focus on, one foundational principle is to elevate worker voices when attempting to improve worker well-being.  

About the Carolina Center 

• Evidence suggests that lower-wage workers suffer disproportionately from a variety of poor health outcomes. Moreover, they tend to be working in the most hazardous work environments. By implementing a TWH approach, we learned that by focusing on essential workers and creating better work conditions for them, all often realize the benefits. 
• Worker voices and engagement in planning, implementing, and evaluating strategies to improve well-being at work are among the most important hallmarks of the TWH approach.  
• Our initial funded research focused on two types of workers – firefighters and healthcare workers – but we are expanding to a wide array of other workers, particularly lower-wage, essential workers who face disproportionate risks at work and health inequities. 

• Our firefighter and healthcare worker projects use an integrated TWH approach by considering ways to improve working conditions as a means of improving the mental and physical health of the individual workers.  

TWH Approach  

• NIOSH recommends that a TWH intervention approach consider 5 defining or “essential” elements:  
  • (1) demonstrate leadership commitment to worker safety and health at all levels of the organization 
  • (2) design work to eliminate or reduce safety and health hazards and promote worker well-being 
  • (3) promote and support worker engagement 
  • (4) ensure confidentiality and worker privacy 
  • (5) integrate relevant systems to advance worker well-being. 
• A TWH approach can help us look more holistically at the forces that impact individuals at work and tend to the root causes so that we drive positive, sustainable change in worker well-being. 

You can read more about the editorial feature here. For those who want to learn more about the Carolina Center or any other centers, related links to the respective center can be found on the NIOSH website.