Abstract
Adverse factors from the psychosocial work environment have been shown to increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases, mental health problems, and musculoskeletal problems in prospective studies. These adverse psychosocial work factors include high psychological demands, low job control, job strain, low social support from coworkers and/or superiors, low reward, and effort-reward imbalance. Organizational-level workplace interventions aiming to diminish the prevalence of these adverse work factors are pertinent prevention strategies to improve worker health. These interventions aim to reduce exposures occurring upstream on the causal pathway leading to deleterious health outcomes. If these interventions are successful in reducing adverse psychosocial work factors (intermediate effects), they could also lead to the reduction of adverse cardiovascular, mental, and musculoskeletal health outcomes (final effects).
This chapter will first present an overview of the state of the evidence regarding the effects of organizational-level interventions that aim to reduce exposures to adverse psychosocial work factors and related health outcomes. This overview will be followed by a brief discussion of important quality criteria required to conduct rigorous research in this area. Three organizational-level intervention studies meeting most of these quality criteria will then be presented in depth. Finally, public health policies that aim to promote a healthy psychosocial work environment will be discussed.
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Brisson, C., Aubé, K., Gilbert-Ouimet, M., Duchaine, C.S., Trudel, X., Vézina, M. (2020). Organizational-Level Interventions and Occupational Health. In: Theorell, T. (eds) Handbook of Socioeconomic Determinants of Occupational Health. Handbook Series in Occupational Health Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31438-5_22
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