Occupational Health Psychology

Details

• Personal Author:
  Magley VJ
• Description:
  A.Long-term Goals and Objectives of the Program: The Occupational Health Psychology (OHP) graduate training program at the University of Connecticut is designed to recruit and train highly qualified and diverse graduate students from areas of psychology, public health and nursing to become Ph.D. researchers capable of conducting multi-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary research focusing on the behavioral aspects of occupational health. A number of occupational trends, such as downsizing, contingent labor and longer work hours, telework, and increasing levels of automation in the workplace have propelled the need for studies on occupational health psychology. OHP is concerned with the broad range of exposures and mechanisms that affect the quality of working life and the responses of workers, such as how individual psychological attributes interact with job content and work organization as well as organizational policies and practices. OHP research and practice explores interventions targeting the work environment as well as the individual to create healthier workplaces and organizations, and to improve the capacity of workers to protect their safety and health and also to maximize their overall effectiveness and sense of wellbeing. As such, OHP fits many of the strategic goals of the NIOSH Total Worker Health initiative. B.Key Elements of the Training Program: Trainees learn how to contribute to the OHP knowledge base and become highly capable at discovering or implementing new ways of maintaining and promoting worker health and safety. The OHP concentration is integrated within the Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology doctoral training program. As such, the training program follows a scientist-practitioner model in which trainees must complete 12 credits of prescribed coursework, three credits of applied field or lab research under the supervision of OHP faculty, master- and dissertation-level research, and participate in faculty research labs. With respect to the coursework, all trainees complete a graduate seminar that covers principles of behavioral science, ergonomics and epidemiology and which requires development of a multidisciplinary research proposal; this course is taught by core OHP faculty and also an epidemiologist from the School of Medicine. In addition, trainees complete an additional required epidemiology course and two elective graduate courses in psychology and/or public health that meet a required breadth requirement covering personnel/organizational psychology, human factors/ergonomics or public health. This combination of course content and applied research training is designed not only to equip trainees with the necessary skills to address today's occupational health problems, but also to enable them to introduce new concepts of work organization and workplace design for enhancing worker health and productivity beyond current expectations, thus realizing the true potential of trans-disciplinary occupational health research to meet both regional and national needs. C.Trainees: We recruit primarily from and also for the Psychology Department's I/O doctoral program in an effort to add extensive OHP training to trainees' more general doctoral requirements. The University of Connecticut's I/O program is the only one in the New England states, making it possible to recruit stellar students for this training. The training program takes approximately 5 years to complete, during which master- and dissertation- level research is completed, as well as additional research to enable trainees to be competitive in a tight job market. Trainees get jobs in academia, industry, consulting firms and governmental agencies. We support approximately 10 trainees annually. Two are supported with full-time, year-long stipends; the remaining receive travel support to attend research conferences. Students outside the I/O Psychology program can complete the 15-credit program to obtain a Graduate Certificate in OHP, but are not eligible for grant support. TPG web link: http://io.psychology.uconn.edu/occupational-health-psychology/. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Behavior Epidemiology Ergonomics Health Personnel Health Promotion Mental Health Occupational Health Public Health Safety Safety Management Staff Development Workplace

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• Keywords:
  Exposure-levels Health-care Health-programs Nursing Psychology Public-health Safety-measures Safety-programs Total-Worker-Health Training Work-environment Workers

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• Series:
  Grant Final Reports
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Final Grant Report
• Place as Subject:
  Connecticut ; OSHA Region 1
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  OEP - Office of Extramural Programs
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-13
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20047355
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB2016-101962
• Citation:
  Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, T01-OH-008610, 2015 Nov; :1-13
• Contact Point Address:
  Vicki J. Magley, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269
• Email:
  vicki.magley@uconn.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2016
• Performing Organization:
  University of Connecticut Storrs
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• End Date:
  20250630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:1ac55e9fed6f46650f7d6e9ac53d17d7a6665692f5fbc3d13e9df4b7c96595b3088ee4ff48a377b0328a13f57fb2f76a044fa4abdd95133cce4284fef320e6bc
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/218623/cdc_218623_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 129.90 KB ]