Worker well-being emphasizes quality of life, driven by the relationship between individual worker health and factors both at and outside the workplace, seeking to have workers thrive and achieve their full potential. In occupational safety and health (OSH), setting worker well-being as an outcome implies a paradigm shift beyond the prevention of workplace illness and injury or health promotion. Embracing this paradigm shift requires a more expansive, systems-thinking approach, to better integrate ?traditional? OSH, personal and socioeconomic risk factors, both horizontally and vertically. The paradigm will likely affect how we conduct OSH research, train the future OSH professional workforce, and design forward-thinking policies to maximize worker health and well-being. Over a three-year period, this U13 Cooperative Agreement with NIOSH will contribute to this public discourse in a major way through a series of conferences and dissemination activities that bring together a broad, interprofessional audience that includes, but goes beyond employers, workers and the academic community, focusing on the three critical areas of research, training and policy/application. The overriding theme is the paradigm shift in focus for OSH. The activities will consist of a combination of topic-specific workshops in Year 1, centered on examining workforce changes in coming years, training needs and research methods and measures in worker well-being. These activities will be preparatory to the celebration of a large, multi-day international, interprofessional conference in Year 2, structured along the three areas of research, training, and policy/application. This conference, held in Houston, will feature national and international keynote speakers, concurrent sessions, discussion forums, case studies and poster communications following an international call for abstracts. In Year 3 there will be another round of workshops, on themes and needs emanating from the Year 2 conference. In addition to the scientific gatherings, other outputs from each year of the project will include dissemination of findings in both the scientific and lay media, development of resources for employers and workers, and the compilation of distribution lists of interested participants as an important step in the establishment of a broad stakeholder network to continue pushing the agenda forward. Each year of the project will undergo both process and outcome evaluations under the general framework of the logic model. This proposal supports the NIOSH Strategic Plan 2019 ? 2023, and is relevant to all 10 Sector Programs, especially the Healthy Work Design Cross-Sector Program, and the Safe Skilled Ready Workforce and Occupational Health Equity Core and Specialty Programs.
In occupational safety and health (OHS), setting worker well-being as an outcome implies a paradigm shift beyond the prevention of workplace illness and injury or health promotion. This paradigm will affect how we conduct OSH research, train the future OSH professional workforce, and design forward-thinking policies to maximize worker health and well-being. Over a three-year period, this U13 Cooperative Agreement with NIOSH will contribute to this public discourse through a series of conferences and dissemination activities, that bring together a broad, interprofessional audience that includes, but goes beyond employers, workers and the academic community, focusing on the three critical areas of research, training and policy/application.
