Research to Improve Worker Safety, Health and Well-being

The Carolina Center engages in research and program evaluation that improves the safety, health and well-being of workers. While traditional health programming in workplaces has focused on motivating workers to improve their own health and reduce personal risk behaviors, our researchers acknowledge the role of working conditions as critically important for ensuring workers’ safety, health and well-being. For example, as we emerge from the pandemic, many workers have faced mental and physical challenges, including burnout and losses that spill over from home to work. Using a Total Worker Health® approach, our team considers factors like the pace and intensity of work, shift schedules, and poor co-worker interactions that might be contributing to burnout. We will identify ways to change policies, programs and benefits to ensure the work environment is supportive of worker safety, health and well-being. 

Initial research efforts focus on mental health and well-being, essential workers, and small- to medium-size employers who typically have less access to health programming for their workforce. A hallmark of our Total Worker Health (“TWH”) approach is to engage with workers and employers to identify priority needs and co-create solutions that are rigorously evaluated. This partnership approach to our research will ensure that solutions are both effective and sustainable over time. We are actively looking to collaborate with researchers from many disciplines who have questions that relate to improving safety, health and well-being at work.

Research Spotlight

Lukasz Mazur, PhD

As co-investigator on the research project on rural and urban clinician well-being, Dr. Mazur co-supervises all aspects of the study including coordination of all the activities of the personnel, and data collection, analysis, and dissemination. Dr. Mazur’s research interests include engineering management as it pertains to continuous quality and patient safety efforts in healthcare, along with human factors engineering with a focus on workload and individual performance during human-machine interactions.
More About Lukasz

Pilot Research Projects

Cultivating innovative research that builds the evidence base for Total Worker Health®