The candidate for this K01 Award application is Dr. Alicia Dugan, an Industrial-Organizational Psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at UConn Health. Dr. Dugan?s training and research plan is designed to create a new career trajectory that addresses the problems of workers with chronic disease, and her initial focus will be on patients returning to work after cancer treatment. This plan provides the additional mentorship and training she will need to redirect herself to a new line of independent research on the secondary prevention of work disability, and it builds upon her existing strengths in worker health, self-care, and intervention design. Her training plan focuses on: (1) cancer survivorship and return to work, (2) chronic disease management and work-health conflict, (3) effective dissemination, and (4) career and leadership development. Dr. Dugan has a mentoring team of four UConn faculty members: Dr. William Shaw, a psychologist and return-to-work expert; Dr. Martin Cherniack, an occupational medicine physician; and Drs. Keith Bellizzi and Thomas Blank, cancer survivorship experts from the field of human development. Cancer survivors are a growing segment of the workforce who are at risk for poor health and work outcomes. Her study will investigate how formal and informal organizational support at work influences survivors? quality of life, their intent to remain on the job, and sources of work-health conflict. It contributes to NIOSH?s Research to Practice initiative by utilizing participatory research methods to involve design teams of stakeholders (survivors, employers, clinicians) in developing and disseminating interventions. The study aligns with the National Occupational Research Agenda?s cross-sector programs on cancer, healthy work design and well-being, and translation research. The study will use an exploratory sequential mixed methods design (focus groups, surveys). Participants will be breast and colorectal cancer survivors, and employers and clinicians. An intermediate outcome of the study is to alter workplace and clinical practice to more effectively meet the needs of survivors returning to work. For cancer survivors, our end outcomes include improved balance between work and disease management, job retention rates, and quality of life. The study methodology has potential application to workers with other chronic diseases as well. The study fills gaps in both occupational health and cancer survivorship research. In addition to publications and presentations, study outputs and dissemination products for stakeholders include: an assessment tool, a research brief summarizing key findings, and newly vetted interventions to enhance workplace and clinical practice. The research project maps directly onto Dr. Dugan?s training goals and provides practical learning experiences for the application of new knowledge. It will inform a follow-up intervention study to be developed as a future R01 grant. This K01 award will provide an exceptional opportunity for Dr. Dugan to build expertise in the field of work disability prevention and to test novel interventions designed to improve the health and safety of workers with chronic health conditions.
/PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE The study will provide an improved understanding of cancer?s adverse effect on employment, and the formal and informal support needed by cancer survivors to return to work, have a high quality of life, and engage in cancer management behaviors. It will provide a basis of evidence for developing future workplace and clinical interventions that can best help cancer survivors, and potentially other workers with chronic disease, to remain in the workforce.
