Lydia Kwak

My research area is intervention and implementation research within the field of worker health. I have been an associate professor since 2017, and a senior lecturer in health promotion since 2019. In 2019, I become head of the unit for Intervention and Implementation Research for worker health at the Institute of Environmental Medicine. I am also assistant study director of the doctoral education at the Institute of Environmental Medicine and involved in several teaching activities. 

I have a master’s degree in health sciences, specializing in Health Education and Promotion, and Biological Health Sciences, from Maastricht University in the Netherlands. In 2007, I defended my doctoral thesis at Maastricht University with the title: the NHF-NRG-In Balance-project: development, implementation and evaluation of a weight gain prevention program. In 2007, I moved to Sweden and started my research-career at Karolinska Institutet as a post-doctor.  

My research area is intervention and implementation research within the field of worker health. This means that I conduct research on how the health of the working population can be promoted at the workplace and how ill-health can be prevented. This research encompasses a broad range of research activities including gaining knowledge on determinants of health and health behaviour through observational studies, testing the effectiveness of methods targeting these determinants through intervention studies, and gaining knowledge on how effective interventions can be most effectively implemented into practice through implementation research studies. My main focus is currently on implementation research. 

I am currently leading a large cluster randomized controlled trial financed by Forte among four municipalities and over 50 public schools in Sweden. The implementation research trial is the third step in facilitating the implementation of evidence-based methods for the prevention of mental ill-health within the workplace. In step one, we developed the Guideline for prevention of mental ill-health in the workplace consisting of evidence-based recommendations describing how organizations can prevent mental ill-health at the workplace through the management of social and organizational risks. In step two, implementation strategies were developed aimed at enhancing the adoption and implementation of the guideline within organizations. The effectiveness of the developed implementation strategies was tested in a cluster-randomized controlled trial among twenty schools in two municipalities in Sweden. Schools were chosen as the setting for implementation given the high prevalence of mental ill-health among teachers and the lack of a structured approach to the management of social and organizational risks within schools. In the current trial, we are testing the implementation mechanisms through which the implementation strategies impact guideline adherence in the workplace. This knowledge will propel the implementation research field toward a better understanding of how, when, where, and why implementation strategies are effective in integrating evidence-based methods into practice. 

I am also leading a new project with start June 2024 financed by AFA-insurance aimed at examining the implementation of support-staff in schools. To increase our understanding of how support staff can better support teachers, the overall aim of this project is to increase knowledge of both the effectiveness of support staff on teacher’s workload and stress, and how support staff are to be implemented and organized in schools. The project applies a mixed-methods design and focuses specifically on public compulsory schools. 

I am the assistant study director of the doctoral education at the Institute of Environmental Medicine. Moreover, I have since 2011 been course leader of the doctoral course Public Health Intervention and Implementation research, which has now be renamed into Implementation Research in health. In addition, I give lectures for undergraduate and graduate programmes on the topic of intervention and implementation research and supervise master-and doctaral students as main and co-supervisor.