Johns Hopkins P.O.E. Total Worker Health Center in Mental Health (POE Center)

PROJECT SUMMARY The overarching goal of the proposed Johns Hopkins P.O.E. Total Worker Health Center in Mental Health (POE Center) is to promote worker mental health and well-being through research, education, outreach and evaluation activities that integrate the psychosocial, organizational, and environmental contexts of worker health. Given the rapid evolution of who works, how they work, and where they work— changes that have accelerated given employer and governmental response to the COVID-19 pandemic—the workforce and workplace are being transformed in ways that will have lasting consequences post-pandemic. Since a large proportion of human life is spent at work, workplace exposures (including psychosocial) are an important contribution to population health or illness. This supports the critical need to not only identify how large-scale disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic will modify the workforce and workplace in relation to worker mental health, substance use and well-being outcomes, but also to identify and empower resilient systems for health protection and health promotion to maintain workforce functions, health, and well-being before, during and after crises. We will address the following aims: 1) To create a NIOSH Total Worker Health® center that serves the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) in Total Worker Health® (TWH) with intentional focus and resources on mental health and substance use prevention and treatment among workers; 2) Integrate concepts of psychosocial, personal, organizational, and environmental context into TWH monitoring and evaluation; and 3) To evaluate POE Center activities in outreach, training, dissemination, and research, and to support the overall goals of the POE Center and NIOSH TWH program. Given the special issues related to mental and behavioral health, including the alarming frequency of problems, the very real barriers due to stigma and privacy concerns, and the hidden costs due to presenteeism versus absenteeism, a NIOSH Total Worker Health center specifically dedicated to worker mental health is greatly needed.