TOTAL WORKER HEALTH

Inputs: NIOSH Strategic Goals

Formerly WorkLife Initiative, pages currently under revision.

The NIOSH Total Worker Health™ Program is in the process of developing strategic goals to guide our research and partnership efforts over the next decade.

NIOSH Program Portfolio Approach

NIOSH has been organizing research, guidance, information, and service efforts into specific programs that can be readily communicated and strategically governed and evaluated. There are ten NORA Sector Programs representing industrial sectors and 24 Cross-Sector Programs organized around adverse health outcomes, statutory programs, global efforts, and other cross-cutting issues of high priority.

The NORA Sector Programs intersect with Cross-Sector Programs in a matrix-like fashion. For example, a goal of reducing injuries and fatalities due to falls in construction would likely be a shared goal between the Construction Sector and with the Traumatic Injury Cross-Sector Program and, if appropriate, would be adopted by both programs. This approach allows multiple programs to work together towards the accomplishment of intersecting goals.

NIOSH Total Worker Health™ Program Goals

NIOSH programs use strategic goals to identify specific outcomes they would like to target and activity and intermediate goals to delineate the necessary steps to accomplish each strategic goal.

NIOSH’s Total Worker Health™ (TWH™) Program seeks to promote workplace programs, policies, and practices that result in healthier, more productive employees through a focus simultaneously on disease prevention, health promotion, and accommodations to age, family, and life stage. TWH™ incorporates NIOSH’s commitment to workplaces free of recognized hazards into broader consideration of the factors that affect worker health and wellbeing. Workplace hazards, such as physical demands, chemical exposures, and work organization, often interact with non-work factors such as family demands and health behaviors to increase health and safety risks. TWH™ and its partners seek to overcome the translational issues that now prevent state-of-the-art occupational health, health promotion and chronic disease research findings from benefiting working age populations immediately, regardless of workplace size, work sector, or region of the country.

Strategic Goal 1: Reduce worker disease and injury risk through the increased adoption of workplace programs that address health risk from both the work environment (physical and organizational) and individual behavior.

Strategic Goal 2: Protect, promote, and improve the total health of the workforce through research that embodies the principles of the TWH program and addresses worker health from a comprehensive perspective.