The NIOSH WorkLife Initiative

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The NIOSH WorkLife Initiative

• Jane Roemer, J.D.
• The Corporate Environment Wellness Initiatives
• The NIOSH WorkLife Initiative
• June 24, 2008

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The WorkLife Initiative

• Was developed by NIOSH--the National Institute
  for Occupational Safety and Health--and
  interested partners
• Seeks to understand and promote work environments
  and policies that result in healthier, more
  productive workers with reduced disease and
  injury and lower health care needs and costs

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The Traditional NIOSH Approach

• Has been to address occupational exposures and
  hazardous conditions arising at the workplace
• Considerable success workers are much less
  likely to become sick or injured on the job than
  when NIOSH was created in 1970

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The Case for Change

• However, narrow focus on workplace risks alone is
  no longer sufficient
• Erosion in distinction between illness and injury
  from work and non-work risks
• Overall health of workers affected by factors
  both inside and outside the workplace stress,
  diet, exercise, smoking, pre-existing conditions,
  chronic illness

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The Case for Change

• Workplace conditions can have an impact on a
  persons health and well-being outside of work
• Activities, conditions, and behaviors off the job
  can influence health, productivity, and abilities
  at work

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Trends Prompting a New Approach

• Aging workforce employers recognizing need to
  maintain worker health and well-being to increase
  work longevity
• Increase in chronic diseases including
  depression, heart disease, and chronic pulmonary
  disease among workers and recognition of the
  relationship between these conditions and work

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Trends Prompting a New Approach

• Employers concerned about productivity,
  absenteeism, presenteeism
• Health insurance costs outpacing wage and profit
  growth, employers cutting back on health
  benefits, and families paying more for health
  care

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Trends Prompting a New Approach

• Corporate mergers, restructuring, and pressures
  on the economy result in job insecurity,
  increased work hours, greater job
  responsibilities, and added health risks
• Productivity losses related to personal and
  family health problems cost US employers an
  average of 1,685 per employee per year, or
  225.8 billion total annually

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The WorkLife Initiative

• Launched by NIOSH in 2005 to lead efforts to
  explore the benefits and limits of integrative
  occupational health protection and health
  promotion programs for improving worker health
  and well-being
• Reflects a growing appreciation of the
  interaction between work-based and non-work-based
  factors on health

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The WorkLife Initiative

• Looks at worker health and well-being in a more
  comprehensive way, taking into account both the
  work environment and individual risks,
  conditions, and behaviors
• The worksite provides an opportunity to address
  both work-related risks and behavioral risks

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Why Coordinate Occupational Safety and Health
with Health Promotion?

• Growing evidence that integrative approaches to
  workplace and worker health are more effective
  than each program separately
• World Health Organization guidelines support the
  view that comprehensive approaches to work and
  health should be integral to management practices

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Why Coordinate Occupational Safety and Health
with Health Promotion?

• Workers at highest risk for exposure to
  work-related hazards are often those most likely
  to engage in risk-related behaviors off the job
• Studies show integrating OSH with HP may increase
  HP program participation and effectiveness for
  high-risk workers

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Occupational Safety and Health vs. Health
Promotion

• Longstanding separation in the public health and
  employment communities between those who address
  control of work-related risks and those who focus
  on individual and behavioral risk reduction
• Advancing knowledge and practice in workplace
  health protection and health promotion involves
  building bridges between the two communities

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Aims of the WorkLife Initiative

• Encourage and support rigorous evaluation of
  integrative approaches to work and health
• Identify proven and promising programs, policies,
  and practices and promote adoption

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Aims of the WorkLife Initiative

• Motivate trans-disciplinary collaboration among
  investigators focused on sustaining and improving
  the health of people who work
• Overcome the traditional separation of the
  occupational health and health promotion
  professional communities

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Implementation Supporting Research

• Establishing academic Centers of Excellence
  UIowa UMass-Lowell/UConn Harvard U
• Trans-disciplinary collaboration and worksite
  pilot programs
• Developing a WorkLife research agenda based on
  industry sectors

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Implementation Disseminating Information

• 2007 WorkLife Symposium
• Communicating known best practices
• Engaging in productive partnerships with
  employers, employee groups, other government
  agencies, and non-governmental organizations

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Integrative Approaches to Work and Health Benefit
the Disability Workforce

• Better work-based programs to sustain and improve
  workplace and worker health benefit all workers
• Integrative approaches tend to improve work
  organization and the physical work environment in
  ways that benefit disabled workers and encourage
  appropriate job accommodation

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Health Disparities

• Disease and injury from work-related and
  non-work-related exposures are unevenly
  distributed throughout the workforce
• More comprehensive approaches to work and health
  help fight health disparities
• The WorkLife Initiative seeks to better
  understand how workplace interventions reduce
  risk of various health outcomes across the
  workforce

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Conclusion

• The WorkLife Initiative creates an opportunity
  for the occupational safety and health community
  and the health promotion community to work
  together to develop and implement workplace
  programs, policies, and practices that prevent
  workplace illness and injury, and sustain and
  promote healthto assure the health of the US
  workforce.

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Additional Information
NIOSH WorkLife Initiative Topic
Page www.cdc.gov/niosh/worklife/ NIOSH Web
Sitewww.cdc.gov/niosh