OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH GRADIENTS IN HOSPITAL WORKERS

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DESCRIPTION (Taken from the Investigators' Abstract) Socioeconomic gradients in health status are ubiquitous in space, persistent in time, and pervasive across diverse health outcomes. Yet little is known of how they arise, and specifically, how great a contribution is made to them by working conditions during adult life. Existing occupational cohort studies, such as the landmark Whitehall publications, have failed to convince some observers that work-related "psychosocial" exposures, e.g., the degree of control felt by employees over their jobs, constitute the key causal influences responsible for socioeconomic gradients in the health of the general adult population, especially gradients in chronic disease. Largely missing in the debate thus far is high-quality evidence on gradients from workplaces with a wide range of jobs -- Whitehall, for example, is fundamentally an office worker study. The present proposal is premised on the view that rich insights into the genesis of such health "gradients" may be gained by studying in detail, over some years, a workplace, such as a hospital, that has a very wide range of jobs, and of employees from different social classes. By far the major "short-term" occupational health problem of this workforce, and many others, is work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WRMSDs) -- a broad class of outcomes including low back pain and upper extremity injuries, such as tendinitis and carpal tunnel syndrome. Both psychosocial and physical-ergonomic exposures at work are now thought to be joint determinants of these musculoskeletal problems. Thus, psychosocial aspects of work are increasingly recognized as risk factors for both sorts of illness processes: traumatic and chronic disease. Yet there appears to be a dearth of research linking socioeconomic and job-category disparities in the risk of WRMSDs, with well-known gradients in many longer-term health outcomes, particularly coronary heart disease and its risk factors (such as hypertension). The investigators propose a study to shed light on the nature and multi-factorial etiology of hospital gradients, across job categories and employee social class backgrounds, in the occurrence of several potentially work-related health outcomes in hospitals. The outcomes studied will be lost-time, work-related musculoskeletal disorders, non-invasive measures of allostatic load (salivary cortisol and blood pressure), overall health-related quality-of-life and injury-specific functional status, mental health status, and total sickness/injury absence from work. The influence of both directly observed physical-ergonomic factors at work and psychosocial occupational exposures on socioeconomic gradients in the risk of these conditions will be assessed. Finally they propose to examine, through qualitative research methods, the social contextual factors within participating hospitals, which influence working conditions. The study team will also work with a labor-management team to develop possible interventions for the problems that are identified by this study.