The role of grassroots community organizations in transforming healthcare systems to achieve health equity.

Two events converged in early 2020 to expose vast disparities and inequities that have been harming many racialized and marginalized people for decades and shake up healthcare systems around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic and the brutal killing by police of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, created a groundswell of emotions that erupted in protests and calls for social justice. Governments, corporations, and businesses made statements against racism, primarily anti-Black racism, instituted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies, and appointed DEI managers to show they were taking action to tackle racism and uphold social justice. However, grassroots community organizations had the most impact in mobilizing populations and effecting change to contain and reduce the spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus, as well as challenging leaders to do more than just talk about dismantling systemic, structural, and institutional racism.

Job Demands-Control-Support model and employee safety performance.

The aim of this study was to explore whether work characteristics (job demands, job control, social support) comprising Karasek and Theorell's (1990) Job Demands-Control-Support framework predict employee safety performance (safety compliance and safety participation; Neal and Griffin, 2006). We used cross-sectional data of self-reported work characteristics and employee safety performance from 280 healthcare staff (doctors, nurses, and administrative staff) from Emergency Departments of seven hospitals in the United Kingdom. We analyzed these data using a structural equation model that simultaneously regressed safety compliance and safety participation on the main effects of each of the aforementioned work characteristics, their two-way interactions, and the three-way interaction among them, while controlling for demographic, occupational, and organizational characteristics. Social support was positively related to safety compliance, and both job control and the two-way interaction between job control and social support were positively related to safety participation. How work design is related to employee safety performance remains an important area for research and provides insight into how organizations can improve workplace safety. The current findings emphasize the importance of the co-worker in promoting both safety compliance and safety participation.