Adding injury to insult: Unfair treatment at work and occupational injury among hospital patient-care workers.

BACKGROUND: Hospital patient-care workers have high occupational injury rates. While physical hazards within hospital work environments are established determinants of injury, social exposures may also contribute. This study examined how reports of unfair treatment at work, a dimension of work-related experiences of discrimination, were associated with injury among hospital-based patient-care workers. METHODS: We used data from the Boston Hospital Workers Health Study, a longitudinal cohort of nurses and nursing assistants at two Boston-area hospitals. In 2018, we conducted a worker survey asking about three types of unfair treatment at work and occupational injuries during the past year. We used mixed-effects logistic regression models to evaluate associations between specific types, total load, and high-frequency exposure of unfair treatment with injury, adjusting for age, gender, race and ethnicity, job title, and unit type. RESULTS: Among 1001 respondents, 21% reported being humiliated in front of others at work, 28% reported being watched more closely than other workers, and 47% reported having to work twice as hard as others for the same treatment. For each type of unfair treatment, we observed a monotonic relationship with occupational injury wherein increasing frequency of exposure was associated with increased odds of injury. We also observed monotonic relationships between total load and high-frequency exposure to unfair treatment and odds of injury. CONCLUSIONS: Work-related unfair treatment is associated with injury among hospital workers. Programs and policies that focus on preventing unfair treatment may lessen injury burden in hospital workers.

Thriving from work questionnaire: Spanish translation and validation.

BACKGROUND: Thriving from Work is a construct that has been highlighted as an important integrative positive worker well-being indicator that can be used in both research and practice. Recent public discourse emphasizes the important contributions that work should have on workers' lives in positive and meaningful ways and the importance of valid and reliable instruments to measure worker well-being. The Thriving from Work Questionnaire measures how workers' experiences of their work and conditions of work contributes in positive ways to their thriving both at and outside of work. METHODS: The purpose of this study was to translate the Thriving from Work Questionnaire from English to Spanish, and then validate the translated questionnaire in a sample of 8,795 finance workers in Peru and Mexico. We used item response theory models replicating methods that were used for the original validation studies. We conducted a differential item functioning analysis to evaluate any differences in the performance of models between Peru and Mexico. We evaluated criterion validity with organizational leadership, flourishing, vitality, community well-being, and worker's home location socio-economic position. RESULTS: The current study demonstrates that the Spanish (Peru/Mexico) questionnaire was found to be a reliable and valid measure of workers' thriving from work. One item was dropped from the long-form version of the original U.S. questionnaire. Both the long and short form versions of the questionnaire had similar psychometric properties. Empirical reliability was high. Criterion validity was established as hypothesized relationships between constructs was supported. There were no differences in the performance of the model between countries suggesting utility across Latin American countries. CONCLUSIONS: The current study demonstrated that the Spanish (Peru and Mexico) version of the questionnaire is both a reliable and valid measure of worker well-being in Latin America. Specific recommendations are made for the adaptation of the questionnaire and directions of future research.

Can Better Leadership Reduce Nursing Home Staff Turnover?

OBJECTIVES: To assess whether a measure of leadership support for worker safety, health, and well-being predicts staff turnover in nursing homes after controlling for other factors. DESIGN: This paper uses administrative payroll data to measure facility-level turnover and uses a survey measure of nursing home leadership commitment to workers. In addition, we use data from Medicare to measure various nursing home characteristics. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Nursing homes with at least 30 beds serving adults in California, Ohio, and Massachusetts were invited to participate in the survey. The analysis sample included 495 nursing homes. METHODS: We used a multivariable ordinary least squares model with turnover rate as the dependent variable. We used an indicator for nursing homes who scored above the median on the measure of leadership that supports worker safety, health, and well-being. Control variables include bed count (deciles), ownership (corporate/noncorporate × for-profit/not-for-profit), percent of residents on Medicaid, state, being in a nonmetropolitan county, and total nurse staffing per patient day in the 2 quarters before the survey. RESULTS: The unadjusted turnover rate was lower for those nursing homes that scored higher on leadership commitment to worker safety, health, and well-being. After controlling for additional variables, greater leadership commitment was still associated with lower turnover but with some attenuation. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: We find that nursing homes with leadership that communicated and demonstrated commitment to worker safety, health, and well-being had relatively fewer nurses leave during the study period, with turnover rates approximately 10% lower than homes without. These findings suggest that leadership may be a valuable tool for reducing staff turnover.

The Long and Winding Road: 25 Years of the National Advanced Driving Simulator.

The National Advanced Driving Simulator is a high-fidelity motion-base simulator owned by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration and managed and operated by the University of Iowa. Its 25-year history has intersected with some of the most significant developments in automotive history, such as advanced driver assistance systems like stability control and collision warning systems, and highly automated vehicles. The simulator is an application of immersive virtual reality that uses multiprojection instead of head-mounted displays. A large-excursion motion system provides realistic acceleration and rotation cues to the driver. Due to its level of immersion and realism, drivers respond to events in the simulator the same way they would in their own vehicle. We document the history and technology behind this national facility.

Lessons From COVID-19 for Protecting Workers in the Next Pandemic.

This Viewpoint examines some of the missteps during the COVID-19 pandemic to protect health care workers and how to use lessons from those mistakes for future pandemics.

Thriving from Work Questionnaire: Dimensionality, reliability, and validity of the long and short form questionnaires.

INTRODUCTION: Thriving from Work is defined as the state of positive mental, physical, and social functioning in which workers' experiences of their work and working conditions enable them to thrive in their overall lives, contributing to their ability to achieve their full potential at work, at home, and in the community. The purpose of this study was to develop a psychometrically-sound questionnaire measuring the positive contribution that work can have on one's well-being both at, and outside of, their work. METHODS: We used both a qualitative and quantitative approach of item reduction, domain mapping dimensionality testing, development of "long-" and "short-" versions of the questionnaire, reliability, and construct and criterion validity testing. This was established in two independent online samples of US based workers (n = 1550, n = 500). RESULTS: We developed a bi-factor model 30-item long-form and a uni-factorial 8-item short-version. The long-form measures both the latent construct of Thriving from Work and six domains (psychological/emotional; work-life integration; social; experience of work; basic needs; health). Both long- and short- forms were found to have high empirical reliability (0.93  and 0.87 respectively). The short-form captures 94% of variance of the long-form. Construct and criterion validity were supported. Test-retest reliability was high. CONCLUSIONS: The Thriving from Work Questionnaire appears to be a valid and reliable measure of work-related well-being in United States workers. Further testing is needed to refine and test the instrument in specific industries, unique worker populations, and across geographic regions.

Impact of assuming a circular orifice on flow error through elliptical regurgitant orifices: computational fluid dynamics and in vitro analysis of proximal flow convergence.

Grounded in hydrodynamic theory, proximal isovelocity surface area (PISA) is a simplistic and practical technique widely used to quantify valvular regurgitation flow. PISA provides a relatively reasonable, though slightly underestimated flow rate for circular orifices. However, for elliptical orifices frequently seen in functional mitral regurgitation, PISA underestimates the flow rate. Based on data obtained with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and in vitro experiments using systematically varied orifice parameters, we hypothesized that flow rate underestimation for elliptical orifices by PISA is predictable and within a clinically acceptable range. We performed 45 CFD simulations with varying orifice areas 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5 cm2, orifice aspect ratios 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, 5:1, and 10:1, and peak velocities (Vmax) 400, 500 and 600 cm/s. The ratio of computed effective regurgitant orifice area to true effective area (EROAC/EROA) against the ratio of aliasing velocity to peak velocity (VA/Vmax) was analyzed for orifice shape impact. Validation was conducted with in vitro imaging in round and 3:1 elliptical orifices. Plotting EROAC/EROA against VA/Vmax revealed marginal flow underestimation with 2:1 and 3:1 elliptical axis ratios against a circular orifice (< 10% for 8% VA/Vmax), rising to ≤ 35% for 10:1 ratio. In vitro modeling confirmed CFD findings; there was a 8.3% elliptical EROA underestimation compared to the circular orifice estimate. PISA quantification for regurgitant flow through elliptical orifices produces predictable, but generally small, underestimation deemed clinically acceptable for most regurgitant orifices.

Rapid Antigen Screening of Students and Staff for SARS-CoV-2 in Rural School Districts, Pierce County, WA, 2020.

During fall 2020 in rural Pierce County, Washington, school districts and the county health department offered weekly rapid antigen screening to students and staff. Asymptomatic screening identified 42.5% of confirmed cases from the population. Parents reported it was a positive experience for their children. The program supported decisions to return to in-person learning, but screening ended because of resource and technical limitations. When planning in-school screening, stakeholder engagement and resource sustainability are important factors to consider. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(8):1134-1137. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.306875).

Epidemic management and control through risk-dependent individual contact interventions.

Testing, contact tracing, and isolation (TTI) is an epidemic management and control approach that is difficult to implement at scale because it relies on manual tracing of contacts. Exposure notification apps have been developed to digitally scale up TTI by harnessing contact data obtained from mobile devices; however, exposure notification apps provide users only with limited binary information when they have been directly exposed to a known infection source. Here we demonstrate a scalable improvement to TTI and exposure notification apps that uses data assimilation (DA) on a contact network. Network DA exploits diverse sources of health data together with the proximity data from mobile devices that exposure notification apps rely upon. It provides users with continuously assessed individual risks of exposure and infection, which can form the basis for targeting individual contact interventions. Simulations of the early COVID-19 epidemic in New York City are used to establish proof-of-concept. In the simulations, network DA identifies up to a factor 2 more infections than contact tracing when both harness the same contact data and diagnostic test data. This remains true even when only a relatively small fraction of the population uses network DA. When a sufficiently large fraction of the population (≳ 75%) uses network DA and complies with individual contact interventions, targeting contact interventions with network DA reduces deaths by up to a factor 4 relative to TTI. Network DA can be implemented by expanding the computational backend of existing exposure notification apps, thus greatly enhancing their capabilities. Implemented at scale, it has the potential to precisely and effectively control future epidemics while minimizing economic disruption.

Statin therapy inhibits fatty acid synthase via dynamic protein modifications.

Statins are a class of drug widely prescribed for the prevention of cardiovascular disease, with pleiotropic cellular effects. Statins inhibit HMG-CoA reductase (HMGCR), which converts the metabolite HMG-CoA into mevalonate. Recent discoveries have shown HMG-CoA is a reactive metabolite that can non-enzymatically modify proteins and impact their activity. Therefore, we predicted that inhibition of HMGCR by statins might increase HMG-CoA levels and protein modifications. Upon statin treatment, we observe a strong increase in HMG-CoA levels and modification of only a single protein. Mass spectrometry identifies this protein as fatty acid synthase (FAS), which is modified on active site residues and, importantly, on non-lysine side-chains. The dynamic modifications occur only on a sub-pool of FAS that is located near HMGCR and alters cellular signaling around the ER and Golgi. These results uncover communication between cholesterol and lipid biosynthesis by the substrate of one pathway inhibiting another in a rapid and reversible manner.

Genome-wide association studies of metabolites in Finnish men identify disease-relevant loci.

Few studies have explored the impact of rare variants (minor allele frequency < 1%) on highly heritable plasma metabolites identified in metabolomic screens. The Finnish population provides an ideal opportunity for such explorations, given the multiple bottlenecks and expansions that have shaped its history, and the enrichment for many otherwise rare alleles that has resulted. Here, we report genetic associations for 1391 plasma metabolites in 6136 men from the late-settlement region of Finland. We identify 303 novel association signals, more than one third at variants rare or enriched in Finns. Many of these signals identify genes not previously implicated in metabolite genome-wide association studies and suggest mechanisms for diseases and disease-related traits.

Work and worker health in the post-pandemic world: a public health perspective.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of work in shaping population health and wellbeing. This Viewpoint applies a multilevel systems framework to assist in understanding the diverse and complex interactions of forces affecting worker health and wellbeing, and how trending changes in employment and working conditions have been accelerated by the pandemic. Government agencies concerned with population health and wellbeing, and economic activity must expand their capacity to monitor, evaluate, and respond to these trends. In addition, integrated enterprise and workplace-based approaches that consider the interactions among these multidimensional drivers will build organisation and worker resilience to navigate the continual changes in work and worker safety, health, and wellbeing in a post-pandemic world.

Workplace Integrated Safety and Health Program Uptake in Nursing Homes: Associations with Ownership.

Workers in nursing homes are at high risk of occupational injury. Understanding whether-and which-nursing homes implement integrated policies to protect and promote worker health is crucial. We surveyed Directors of Nursing (DON) at nursing homes in three US states with the Workplace Integrated Safety and Health (WISH) assessment, a recently developed and validated instrument that assesses workplace policies, programs, and practices that affect worker safety, health, and wellbeing. We hypothesized that corporate and for-profit nursing homes would be less likely to report policies consistent with Total Worker Health (TWH) approaches. For each of the five validated WISH domains, we assessed the association between being in the lowest quartile of WISH score and ownership status using multivariable logistic regression. Our sample included 543 nursing homes, 83% which were corporate owned and 77% which were for-profit. On average, DONs reported a high implementation of TWH policies, as measured by the WISH. We did not find an association between either corporate ownership or for-profit status and WISH score for any WISH domain. Results were consistent across numerous sensitivity analyses. For-profit status and corporate ownership status do not identify nursing homes that may benefit from additional TWH approaches.

Implementation of an organizational intervention to improve low-wage food service workers' safety, health and wellbeing: findings from the Workplace Organizational Health Study.

BACKGROUND: Many organizational interventions aim to improve working conditions to promote and protect worker safety, health, and well-being. The Workplace Organizational Health Study used process evaluation to examine factors influencing implementation of an organizational intervention. This paper examines the extent to which the intervention was implemented as planned, the dose of intervention implemented, and ways the organizational context hindered or facilitated the implementation of the intervention. METHODS: This proof-of-concept trial was conducted with a large, multinational company that provides food service through contractual arrangements with corporate clients. The 13-month intervention was launched in five intervention sites in October 2018. We report findings on intervention implementation based on process tracking and qualitative data. Qualitative data from 25 post-intervention interviews and 89 process tracking documents were coded and thematically analyzed. RESULTS: Over the 13-month intervention, research team representatives met with site managers monthly to provide consultation and technical assistance on safety and ergonomics, work intensity, and job enrichment. Approximately two-thirds of the planned in-person or phone contacts occurred. We tailored the intervention to each site as we learned more about context, work demands, and relationships. The research team additionally met regularly with senior leadership and district managers, who provided corporate resources and guidance. By assessing the context of the food service setting in which the intervention was situated, we explored factors hindering and facilitating the implementation of the intervention. The financial pressures, competing priorities and the fast-paced work environment placed constraints on site managers' availability and limited the full implementation of the intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Despite strong support from corporate senior leadership, we encountered barriers in the implementation of the planned intervention at the worksite and district levels. These included financial demands that drove work intensity; turnover of site and district managers disrupting continuity in the implementation of the intervention; and staffing constraints that further increased the work load and pace. Findings underscore the need for ongoing commitment and support from both the parent employer and the host client. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study was retrospectively registered with the Clinical Trials. Gov Protocol and Results System on June 2, 2021 with assigned registration number NCT04913168 .

ThIV-Desferrioxamine: characterization of a fluorescent bacterial probe.

Diversifying our ability to guard against emerging pathogenic threats is essential for keeping pace with global health challenges, including those presented by drug-resistant bacteria. Some modern diagnostic and therapeutic innovations to address this challenge focus on targeting methods that exploit bacterial nutrient sequestration pathways, such as the desferrioxamine (DFO) siderophore used by Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) to sequester FeIII. Building on recent studies that have shown DFO to be a versatile vehicle for chemical delivery, we show proof-of-principle that the FeIII sequestration pathway can be used to deliver a potential radiotherapeutic. Our approach replaces the FeIII nutrient sequestered by H4DFO+ with ThIV and made use of a common fluorophore, FITC, which we covalently bonded to DFO to provide a combinatorial probe for simultaneous chelation paired with imaging and spectroscopy, H3DFO_FITC. Combining insight provided from FITC-based imaging with characterization by NMR spectroscopy, we demonstrated that the fluorescent DFO_FITC conjugate retained the ThIV chelation properties of native H4DFO+. Fluorescence microscopy with both [Th(DFO_FITC)] and [Fe(DFO_FITC)] complexes showed similar uptake by S. aureus and increased intercellular accumulation as compared to the FITC and unchelated H3DFO_FITC controls. Collectively, these results demonstrate the potential for the newly developed H3DFO_FITC conjugate to be used as a targeting vector and bacterial imaging probe for S. aureus. The results presented within provide a framework to expand H4DFO+ and H3DFO_FITC to relevant radiotherapeutics (like 227Th).

Thriving from Work: Conceptualization and Measurement.

Work is a major contributor to our health and well-being. Workers' thriving is directly influenced by their job design, work environment and organization. The purpose of this report is to describe the qualitative methods used to develop the candidate items for a novel measure of Thriving from Work through a multi-step iterative process including: a literature review, workshop, interviews with experts, and cognitive testing of the candidate items. Through this process, we defined Thriving from Work as the state of positive mental, physical, and social functioning in which workers' experiences of their work and working conditions enable them to thrive in their overall lives, contributing to their ability to achieve their full potential in their work, home, and community. Thriving from Work was conceptualized into 37 attributes across seven dimensions: psychological, emotional, social, work-life integration, basic needs, experience of work, and health. We ultimately identified, developed and/or modified 87 candidate questionnaire items mapped to these attributes that performed well in cognitive testing in demographically and occupationally diverse workers. The Thriving from Work Questionnaire will be subjected to psychometric testing and item reduction in future studies. Individual items demonstrated face validity and good cognitive response properties and may be used independently from the questionnaire.