NIOSH Extramural Research and Training Programs

Total Worker Health™

Centers of Excellence to Promote a Healthier Workforce

Since 2007, NIOSH has funded and partnered with national Centers of Excellence to explore and research the concepts of Total Worker Health™. The Centers' research examines the integration and cross-promotion of worker protection, worksite enhancement, and worker health promotion interventions. The effort strives to recognize the synergy in combining efforts to reduce personal health risk factors with traditional safety and psychosocial stress hazard reduction approaches in the workplace.

Efforts include pilot testing promising workplace policies and programs; developing and disseminating best practices and tool kits; developing strategies for overcoming barriers to organizational acceptance and adoption of comprehensive, coordinated work-based health protection and promotion interventions; investigating costs and benefits associated with integrated programs; and promoting increased development and application of physiological and biological markers of stress, sleep, and depression and their use for worker protection or improved health outcomes.

• Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace
  • At the University of Massachusetts
  • At the University of Connecticut
• Harvard School of Public Health Center for Work, Health and Wellbeing
• Oregon Healthy WorkForce Center
• University of Iowa Healthier Workforce Center for Excellence