The broad goals of the proposed research are (1) to develop methods for evaluating occupational safety and health (OSH) programs; and (2) to apply OSH program measures for needs assessment and evaluation uses in intervention effectiveness studies. OSH programs are an important intervention effectiveness research priority because: (1) they apply to all hazards in all work contexts; (2) current program measures were developed based on injury and other safety outcomes, with little characterization of their relevance to hazardous chemical exposures; (3) OSH program measures have yet to be systematically tested as tools for OSH needs assessment, intervention design, and intervention evaluation; and (4) OSHA is currently drafting an OSH program standard. Two on-going NCI-funded randomized controlled intervention trials, entitled Wellworks-2 and Wellworks-Small Business, are assessing the effectiveness of integrating occupational health and health promotion interventions on reductions in lifestyle cancer risks. These trials, which are already collecting data on employee perceptions of OSH conditions as well as measures of the potential for exposure to hazardous substances, would be complemented by integration of organizational-level measures of OSH programs. Cross-sectional analyses would be conducted to (1) characterize OSH programs and construct composite organization-level OSH program measures at baseline in large and small manufacturing worksites; (2) determine the relationship between OSH program measures and hazardous chemical exposure indices in order to validate the relevance of OSH program measures in the prevention of occupational illness and disease; and (3) determine the relationship between OSH program measures and individual-level employee self-reports of OSH conditions in order to validate organizational level OSH program scores against employee perceptions of OSH conditions. Finally, we propose to evaluate the effectiveness of Wellworks interventions on OSH program measures using experimental designs in large and small manufacturing worksites. The proposed research will substantially enhance intervention research, OSH practice, and regulatory applications of OSH program measures.
