Working people develop a wide variety of illnesses during their working lives, manifested in time lost from work, disability, physical incapacity, psychological distress and ultimately morbidity and mortality. How/whether these manifestations are connected to work is a critically important issue for those in the fields of medicine, occupational and public health. We will introduce the social epidemiologic approach, in which the workplace is viewed as a key determinant of a wide variety of behavioral and health outcomes. In other words, we focus upon the workplace as a relatively distal cause of these outcomes and view personality and individual factors as more proximal. Through viewing of a segment of Charlie Chaplin in the film Modern Times, we present two approaches to OHP, one of which focuses on individual coping and the other on the impact of the workplace on the individual. We present a brief overview of the field of stress research, and then examine in depth the historical origins of theoretical models of workplace psychosocial stressors which have been empirically validated, including the Demand-Control-Support (DCS) model and the Effort Reward Imbalance (ERI) model.

Practicum Packet which includes Job Content Questionnaire, Effort-Reward Imbalance and OSI.

Faculty contributors: Peter Schnall, Karen Belkic, Paul Landsbergis

Readings:

Schnall PL, Belkic K, Landsbergis PA, Baker D.A. Why the workplace and cardiovascular disease? In: Schnall PL, Belkic K, Landsbergis PA, Baker D. (eds.) The Workplace and Cardiovascular Disease. Occupational Medicine: State of the Art Reviews. 2000; 15: 1-5.

Stressors at the Workplace: Theoretical Models. In: Schnall PL, Belkic K, Landsbergis PA, Baker D (eds.) Occupational Medicine: State of the Art Review. The Workplace and Cardiovascular Disease. 2000; 15 (1): 69-105.

Health, Productivity and Work Life in Karasek RA, Theorell T. Healthy Work: Stress, productivity and the reconstruction of working life. New York. Basic Books, Inc., 1990. Pgs 1-31.