Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): HITEC II is an intervention study that focuses on a single agency, the Connecticut Department of Correction (DOC). There are three compelling reasons. First, corrections is the largest single body of public employees in many States, with a wide range of physical and psychosocial hazards but markedly understudied. Second, results will be generalizable to other hazardous public safety jobs. Third, work at DOC to date has progressed in a remarkable way, offering the opportunity to merge a facility-level approach to Total Worker Health(tm) - integrating attention to work environment risks and the health risks of individuals - with a 'systems approach' that directly engages organizational structures and practices (e.g., budgeting and procurement, engineering and workplace design, and productivity measurement). The premise of HITEC II, in alignment with the other CPH-NEW projects, is that changes in worksite health, whether participatory or introduced from above, are likely to be incomplete and unsustainable unless management undergoes coincident structural change beyond offering basic support for local health promotion activities. The CT DOC and sister agencies, such as Administrative Services and the Office of the Comptroller, appear to be ready for this next critical intervention phase. The successful results of these upper level intervention will be translated into practical toolkits during the lifespan of HITEC II. HITEC II consists of tw Specific Aims, organized around two program components: 1. Continuation of the facility comparison between a best practices, semi-participatory approach (Site A), based on 'kaizen' -type principles, and a participatory site (Site B) where occupational health/safety (OHS) and workplace health promotion (WHP) interventions are developed by a bottom-up design team, supported by a middle-management team. This comparison features structural changes from the HITEC 1 study design, namely the replacement of top-down best practices with the 'kaizen' approach; the addition of upper level design elements affecting both sites; and greater standardization and comparability of interventions across sites. 2. A new intervention study on sequential inception cohorts, namely 2013-2014 classes of new officers undergoing intensive training at the DOC training academy. Half will receive a standardized approach and half will be directly engaged in a two-tier mentoring system.