Effectiveness of the Educator Well-being Program

CPH-NEW IV - Total Worker Health - Total Teacher Health

Using a stepped wedge design (prospective cohort with concurrent controls) among six paired, elementary schools, investigators will implement and evaluate the Educator Well-being Program. The investigators will evaluate whether the process improves organizational-level factors, teacher mental well-being (stress, depression and anxiety symptoms).

Study Overview

• Status: Enrolling by invitation
• Conditions: Occupational Health; Participatory Action Research; Educator Well-being; Employee Health
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Healthy Workplace Participatory Program

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Estimated): 4000
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Connecticut
    • Farmington, Connecticut, United States, 06030
      • UConn Health

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• All staff aged 18 years or older at the time of survey administration within the three school districts will be eligible for participation.

Exclusion Criteria:

• None.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Crossover Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Active Comparator: Delayed Intervention; Status quo program remains in place with new ongoing data collection, then experimental intervention as above.	Behavioral: Healthy Workplace Participatory Program; The Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace's (CPH-NEW's) Healthy Workplace Participatory Program (HWPP) is a participatory process in which end-users design TWH interventions that simultaneously change organizational and individual behavior to improve the health, safety and well-being of their workforce. The HWPP uses a process to empower workers to identify the root causes of health and safety concerns and then design, implement and evaluate interventions to address those problems. The Total Teacher Health Project adapted the HWPP for educators and refer to it as the Educator Well-being Program.
Experimental: Educator Well-being Program; Staff at participating schools will experience the Educator Well-being Program process and complete pre- and post-intervention survey.	Behavioral: Healthy Workplace Participatory Program; The Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace's (CPH-NEW's) Healthy Workplace Participatory Program (HWPP) is a participatory process in which end-users design TWH interventions that simultaneously change organizational and individual behavior to improve the health, safety and well-being of their workforce. The HWPP uses a process to empower workers to identify the root causes of health and safety concerns and then design, implement and evaluate interventions to address those problems. The Total Teacher Health Project adapted the HWPP for educators and refer to it as the Educator Well-being Program.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Change in Team Attendance	Attendance for each Educator Design Team meeting (1-4 times per month)	Through study completion, an average of two years
Change in Team Engagement	Percentage of combined agree and strongly agree responses for 2 survey items collected following Educator Design Team meetings (1-4 times per month): "I spoke up and gave my opinion at this meeting" and "The discussion was meaningful for achieving health, safety, and well-being goals." (Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree, Not Applicable). Items are computed individually.	Through study completion, an average of two years
Change in Level of Committee Activity	A qualitative summary of field notes collected by research personnel following Educator Design Team and Administrator Team meetings (1-4 times per month) over the course of the study.	Through study completion, an average of two years
Change in team-selected health/safety/well-being issue	Targeted pre- and post-intervention surveys will be designed and administered by the Educator Design Team	Through study completion, an average of two years

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Stress	The "All-Employee Survey for Educators" includes 1 question related to stress (Eddy, 2009). The score ranges from 1-10, where higher scores indicate more stress.	Prior to random selection of immediate and delayed intervention site, and 1 years later
Anxiety Symptoms	The "All-Employee Survey for Educators" includes 7 items from the GAD-7 (Spitzer et al., 2006). A summary score is created and scores range from 0-21, where higher scores indicate greater anxiety symptoms.	Prior to random selection of immediate and delayed intervention site, and 1 years later
Depression Symptoms	The "All-Employee Survey Educator" includes 10 from the CES-D (Radloff et al., 1977) A summary score is created by summing items score ranges from 0-30, where higher scores indicate greater depression symptoms.	Prior to random selection of immediate and delayed intervention site, and 1 years later
Supportive health climate	The "All-Employee Survey Educator" includes 3 items from Multi-faceted organizational health climate assessment (Zweber et al., 2018). A summary score is created by averaging the 3 items with score ranges from 1-4, where higher scores indicate more supportive health climate.	Prior to random selection of immediate and delayed intervention site, and 1 years later
Supportive School Climate	The "All-Employee Survey Educator" includes 6 from the School Climate sub-scale for staff connection (La Salle et al. 2018) A summary score is created by averaging the items with score ranges from 1-4, where higher scores indicate a greater more supportive school climate.	Prior to random selection of immediate and delayed intervention site, and 1 years later
Proportion of content followed according to the Educator Well-being Program protocol	A process measure that will be determined by adherence to Educator Well-being Program protocol and pre-designed agendas for Educator Design Team meetings (1-4 times per month)	Through study completion, an average of two years
Change in scope of health/safety/well-being protocol	Periodic interviews, designed by the research team, will be conducted with Design Team co-facilitators and Administrator Team, and compared to results from baseline leadership interviews, designed by the research team, regarding scope of health/safety/well-being	Through study completion, an average of two years
Shared staff-management awareness of job-related health, safety and well-being issues	Interim interviews, designed by the research team, will be conducted with Educator Design Team co-facilitators and Administrator Team.	Through study completion, an average of two years

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: UConn Health
• Collaborators: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH/CDC)
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Jennifer Cavallari, ScD, UConn Health

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): November 9, 2022
• Primary Completion (Estimated): August 1, 2026
• Study Completion (Estimated): August 1, 2026

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: November 29, 2022
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: November 29, 2022
• First Posted (Actual): December 8, 2022

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): December 22, 2023
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: December 18, 2023
• Last Verified: December 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: 22-123S-2; 1 U19OH012299-01-00 (Other Grant/Funding Number: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No