Collaborators
The Center plans, implements, and disseminates projects in collaboration with employers, labor unions, and other stakeholders involved in worksite health, safety, and worker well-being. Together, we conduct research initiatives, implement health and safety interventions, and interpret and publish findings.
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Education and Research Center (ERC)
The Education and Research Center gives occupational safety and health professionals the opportunity to develop a public health perspective and learn the implications of public policy on their work. They also learn skills needed to identify and prevent occupational impairments, disease, and injuries through control or elimination of harmful occupational exposures. As a NIOSH-funded Center, the ERC co-sponsors seminars and conference representation with our Center.
HealthPartners/HealthPartners Institute of Minnesota
HealthPartners and HealthPartners Institute are long-time Center collaborators. The Center’s partnership with HealthPartners and HealthPartners Institute has provided opportunities for HealthPartners clients to learn about and engage with key Total Worker Health concepts and approaches. The collaboration has also helped our Center’s research team to better understand HealthPartners clients’ perceptions of the value of (and barriers to) adopting the Center’s capacity building tools and resources. Center researchers collaborated with HealthPartners in 2023 to develop a 90-minute interactive seminar/ webinar introducing key aspects of a Total Worker Health approach. This asynchronous webinar, Accelerate health outcomes at your organization with Total Worker Health®, provides a step-by-step explanation of an organizational approach to addressing worker safety, health, and well-being, and is available to the public on our Center’s website, accompanied by a worksheet for participants to use in identifying working conditions to improve and action steps to take to implement workplace changes. The next phase of this ongoing collaboration includes a research project that aims to identify factors that may motivate an organization to explore and adopt a Total Worker Health approach.
Institute for Strategic Clarity (ISC)
ISC is a research and education non-profit organization, focused on identifying and describing the fundamental individual and organizational agreement structures (pactoecography) that generate far greater levels of sustainable outcomes, engagement, and ecosystem-wide impact. Through its global network, ISC uses fieldwork and survey research to inform this pactoecographic theoretical framework. ISC is collaborating with the Thriving Workers, Thriving Workplaces Study, facilitating data collection in multiple countries, and extending the framing of “enterprise outcomes” to clarify the impact a thriving workplace has on the total value an enterprise generates across its ecosystem.
Mass General Brigham
Mass General Brigham, a not-for-profit healthcare system, is a key collaborator on the Center’s The Boston Hospital Workers Health Study. By providing access to employee record databases, they enabled our researchers to link survey data with individual worker and unit-level data. This creates a unique opportunity to examine absenteeism, reported injuries, worker compensation claims and costs, and turnover and retention. Our ongoing findings have shed new light on the complex relationships between the work environment and worker health outcomes.
Massachusetts Department of Public Health
Our researchers collaborated with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) while developing the SafeWell Guidelines for implementing a comprehensive worker health program. Building on that successful partnership, the Center plans to co-sponsor educational and training opportunities for professionals, jointly participate in the MDPH Hospital Ergonomics Task Force, and have Center students and trainees take part in MDPH research initiatives.
SAIF
The Center continues to collaborate with SAIF (State Accident Insurance Fund), Oregon’s not-for-project workers’ comp insurance company. With the Center’s support and input, SAIF identified key aspects of our Implementation Guidelines and streamlined the information to create Worker Well-being in 5 easy steps, an online suite of Total Worker Health videos, tip sheets, and resources for SAIF consultants to use with their small- and medium-sized clients. Through an evaluation of this process, the Center is better able to understand facilitators and barriers to creating these types of resources, to inform similar future efforts. Our researchers are working with our SAIF colleagues to develop a case study and paper based on this collaboration.
International Collaborators
Sheffield University Management School (Sheffield, UK)
Sheffield University Management School has had a strong collaborative relationship with the Center for Work, Health, & Well-being since 2019. There have been and continue to be several specific collaborative engagements with Dr. Karina Nielsen, Chair in Work Psychology. Activities include the development of joint research projects, training/education of doctoral and post-doctoral students, co-teaching on organizational approaches to promoting and protecting a healthier workforce, and joint manuscript preparation. The Center and Sheffield collaborated on the Workplace Organizational Health Study (2016-2021), a study the Center implemented with a large food service company to develop and test policies, programs, and practices to improve the health, safety, and well-being of food service workers in corporate environments. Dr. Nielsen and her colleagues from Sheffield worked closely with Center researchers on developing research strategies, analyzing data, and co-authoring seven publications using data from this study. Dr. Sorensen and Dr. Nielsen are currently collaborating on a book, under contract with Oxford University Press, on the topic of supporting workplaces to make organizational change.