Methods of health promotion in the workplace – Lydia Kwak's research group

We conduct research with a focus on developing, evaluating and implementing effective methods to promote health in the workplace with a specific focus on the prevention of stress and mental illness.

Part of the:

Funding

Grants

  • Swedish Research Council for Health Working Life and Welfare
    1 July 2020 - 30 June 2027
    There is an urgent need for more knowledge on effective implementation strategies, as two-thirds of implementation efforts fail to achieve the intended change, and half have no effect on outcomes of interest. These implementation failures are partly due to the limited understanding of how implementation strategies work—the mechanisms of change through which implementation strategies affect implementation. This project will fill this research-gap by incorporating mediation analyses into a cluster randomized controlled trial that compares the effectiveness of two implementation strategies for implementing the Guideline for the prevention of mental ill-health at the workplace in schools. Schools are chosen as the setting for implementation given the high prevalence of mental ill-health among teachers. Moreover, they lack a structured approach to the prevention of mental ill-health. The aim of the project is to investigate how implementation strategies affect the defined mechanisms and guideline implementation. The mechanisms of the following implementation strategies will be compared: a discrete strategy that includes an educational meeting (control group) and a multifaceted strategy (intervention group) that combines the educational meeting with workshops, implementation teams and evaluative and iterative strategies (e.g. Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles). Our hypothesis is that schools that receive the multifaceted implementation strategy will show a greater increase in guideline adherence at follow-up than schools that only participate in an educational meeting. Mechanisms that will be tested include hypothesized mediators originating from the individual behavior change theory COM-B. The project will be conducted in primary schools (n=50) in four municipalities in Sweden. Adherence to the guideline will be assessed at baseline and 6, 12- and 24-months follow-up, and mediators at baseline and 3, 6, 9, 12- and 24-months follow-up. Mixed methods will be used.
  • Swedish Research Council for Health Working Life and Welfare
    1 January 2020 - 31 December 2024
  • Swedish Research Council for Health Working Life and Welfare
    1 July 2018 - 30 September 2023
  • Swedish Research Council for Health Working Life and Welfare
    1 January 2017 - 30 September 2023

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