This application responds to RFA-OH-14-003 to renew, for two years, the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center (OHWC), a NIOSH Total Worker Health(tm) (TWH) Center of Excellence. In our first 2.5 years, we have established a robust, productive TWH Center of Excellence that has accomplished our aims, met our recruitment goals, provided education and outreach to large and growing audiences, stimulated and supported partners to adopt a TWH focus, and provided leadership on TWH in our region and the US. The OHWC's theme remains Intervention Effectiveness. We are focused on team-based and technology-based interventions to promote and protect health, and our targeted occupations are unique and broad. The OHWC is a trans-disciplinary collaboration among the Oregon Health and Science University, Portland State University, the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research (Portland), and the University of Oregon's Labor Education and Research Center. The 4 research projects of the OHWC are: 1) Creating health and safety """"""""Communities of Practice"""""""" for Home Care workers to organize isolated home care workers into neighborhood-based Work-Life teams using a peer-led safety/wellness curriculum. 2) Team-based Work-Life and safety intervention for construction workers by training supervisors in a team-based approach to support work-family balance in City of Portland construction workers. 3) Health promotion and health protection in young workers using internet-delivered training to foster healthy lifestyles and safe practices in young Parks and Recreation workers, enhanced with social media. 4) Supervisor training to promote health and safety in construction by training team-building skills supported by behavior self-tracking technology to Latino/non-Latino construction supervisors, plus employee wellness. The OHWC leveraged its federal funding to self-support an additional research project using a team-based approach, in corrections officers. These 5 projects, all designed as randomized trials, use common measures that are entered into a Data Repository where analyses can magnify the impact. The interventions are crafted with a focus on understanding both public health impact and translation of science to the workplace. The Center is evolving the theory, research and practice of TWH through a Summer Institute, symposia, and innovative, broadly-directed outreach. Outreach is tightly integrated with the research through participation of outreach staff in research planning and implementation, and participation of research staff in outreach and all education activities. Research, education, outreach, dissemination and translation are, thus, integrated, as are our TWH interventions.
The Oregon Healthy Workforce Center, a NIOSH Total Worker Health(tm) Center of Excellence, develops and evaluates workplace interventions to improve safety, health, wellness and well-being. Total Worker Health addresses the needs of the whole person, stresses prevention rather than recovery, and recognizes the great potential of workplace programs to produce organizational and individual behavior change that improves health and reduces accidents. The health of the US population can be improved through prevention, and that is our focus.
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