NIOSH recognizes six centers of excellence as part of Total Worker Health initiative

Washington – NIOSH recently recognized six facilities as Centers of Excellence, designed to help advance the overall safety, health, and well-being of workers. The centers explore and research the concepts of NIOSH’s Total Worker Health initiative, which uses different approaches to prevent worker injuries and illnesses while promoting health and wellness.

The six centers, to which NIOSH will provide funding, are:

• The Center for Work, Health, & Well-Being, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health – to achieve optimal worker safety and health and employer outcomes through improved conditions of work.
• The Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace, University of Massachusetts-Lowell and University of Connecticut – to improve worker health through a highly participatory process involving front-line employees and top-down organizational support, and to study and disseminate information on such participatory models.
• The Healthier Workforce Center of the Midwest, University of Iowa – to protect and preserve worker safety and health through knowledge generation and dissemination of evidence-based TWH practices.
• The Oregon Healthy Workforce Center, Oregon Health and Science University – to evaluate the concept of Total Worker Health through research on intervention effectiveness and to determine its impact on workforce and population safety and health.
• The Rocky Mountain Center for Total Worker Health, University of Colorado – to advance the overall health and well-being of workers in the Rocky Mountain region.
• The University of Illinois-Chicago Center for Healthy Work – to improve the health of the rapidly growing number of vulnerable workers nationwide.

“New patterns of employment and work restructuring impact the safety and health of workers and we look forward to working to improve safety interventions in construction, small business, and health care, among others,” NIOSH Director John Howard said in a Sept. 13 press release.

NIOSH established the Centers of Excellence in 2005.