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 experience acquired through this K01 will help me to achieve my career goal of becoming an independent occupational health researcher who conducts innovative intervention-oriented mixed methods research.
Protecting and promoting the health of the large and rapidly expanding population of home care workers 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 provide insight into which aspects of client death support provided to home care workers are associated with reduced grief, reduced stress, and increased job satisfaction, and thus is an important step toward the goal of reducing occupational stress and turnover among home care workers longer term.
