Post-Doctoral Fellow in Occupational Injury and Disability Research

The Department of Work Environment, School of Health & Environment, University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) seeks a post-doctoral fellow in occupational injury and disability research. This is a full-time, benefited position for an initial period of one year, with potential for up to two additional years.  The primary goal of the program is to develop the research careers of recent doctoral graduates with a focus on workplace injury and disability, through a program that encourages creativity and independent discovery in a collaboration between two research institutions with extensive records of accomplishment in these fields, the School of Health & Environment at UMass Lowell, and the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety (LMRIS) in Hopkinton, MA.

Occupational injuries remain a largely hidden economic and social burden of many productive activities.  The globalization of systems of production and consumption has made it even harder to track the injury burden of industrial production, as the production and consumption of goods and services become more and more frequently separated by national borders and many thousands of miles. 

Within the U.S., shifts in economic activity away from manufacturing and into the service economy have a direct impact on injury surveillance.  It is no longer effective to focus surveillance on large centralized factories, where worker injury can be monitored by industrial medical staffs with direct knowledge of the factory’s particular hazards.  The modern U.S. economy obscures the burden of injuries because it is increasingly decentralized and non-unionized, and because it is served by a medical care system which is not well-organized to gather and communicate data that might be useful for injury surveillance.  This in turn hides the need for injury prevention activities and the social benefits of injury prevention interventions.

The post-doctoral researcher will work on one or a limited number of specific research projects in injury and/or disability research. These projects will be chosen by the researcher, in consultation with mentors in the Department of Work Environment and with colleagues at LMRIS.

The Candidate

The post-doctoral researcher will have a doctoral degree in epidemiology, safety research, or a related field.  The candidate will have less than five years’ experience post-doctorate.  Desirable candidates will have a demonstrated record of individual initiative in research, strong analytic skills, and potential to become independent academic researchers within two to three years.

The Post-Doctoral fellow will carry out occupational injury and/or disability research in close collaboration with mentors and colleagues in the School of Health and Environment (SHE) and the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety (LMRIS), and build competence as an independent researcher. The post-doctoral researcher will be expected to publish at least one article in a peer-reviewed journal each year.  He/she will also be expected to be an active participant in seminars at LMRIS and UML.  He/she will be expected to present a paper at a relevant international conference each year.  Post-doctoral fellows are also expected to use the support offered by their fellowship to develop their own independent research program, and to write grant proposals to support this initiative.  A final report will be prepared each year, summarizing accomplishments, challenges, and plans for the next year.

The post-doctoral fellow will conduct occupational injury and disability research by:

• developing scientific research proposals;

• gathering and analyzing data;

• collaborating with other researchers;

• publishing in the peer-reviewed literature;

• participating in seminars and work groups;

• collaborating on research grant applications; and

• guest lecturing in relevant courses in the School of Health & Environment.

This position will be 37.5 hours per week, to be performed approximately half on the UML campus in Lowell, MA, and half at LMRIS in Hopkinton, MA, during normal business hours.

The Learning Environment

The Department of Work Environment has a full-time faculty of 13, professional staff of about 20, and approximately 70 masters and doctoral students.  Foreign students come from more than 15 nations, while many local students work full-time while studying at night.  Their direct experience in the full range of sectors in the Massachusetts economy brings another kind of exciting diversity to the Department.  It is one of the largest academic programs in occupational health and safety in the U.S.  The Department receives graduate study training funds from NIOSH, and also supports students on research assistantships supporting the faculty’s extensive funded research activities.

There are five concentrations in the academic program: occupational hygiene, ergonomics/safety, epidemiology, work environment policy, and cleaner production/pollution prevention.  In addition, there are three affiliated research centers: the Kerr Ergonomics Institute, the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production (LCSP), and the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW).

Some of the primary research activities in occupational injury and disability research in the Department are summarized here:

The Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace  (CPH-NEW) is a Center for Excellence funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in 2006.  It is a collaborative research-to-practice initiative led by investigators from the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) and the University of Connecticut (UCONN). The Center’s research goal is to evaluate the feasibility, effectiveness, and economic benefits of integrating occupational health and safety with health promotion interventions to improve employee health. There is a strong emphasis on workplace occupational ergonomic interventions and on worker involvement. Outcomes of particular interest include musculoskeletal health, mental health, and cardiovascular health.

The Sustainable Hospitals Program (SHP) provides technical support to the healthcare industry for selecting products and work practices that eliminate or reduce occupational and environmental hazards, maintain quality patient care and contain costs. We support and collaborate with healthcare institutions, clinicians, unions representing healthcare practitioners, students, and government, as well as environmental and healthcare advocacy groups. With a 4-year grant from NIOSH, an SHP team led by Professor Margaret Quinn has been studying sharps injuries and blood exposures in home healthcare. Project SHARRP is currently planning its next phase of research, including an emphasis on the design of improved safe needle devices.

Project SHARRP

Occupational exposure to bloodborne pathogens, particularly hepatitis A, B, C or HIV, can result in debilitating or fatal disease. Even the post-exposure prophylactic treatment can have serious health and economic consequences. Health care workers are at risk of infection from bloodborne pathogens, primarily as a result of percutaneous injuries from needles and other sharp devices but also from mucus membrane and skin exposures to contaminated blood or body fluids. Most of the research on the risks of bloodborne pathogen exposures is based on information from hospitals workers; little information exists about the risks to home health care workers. The objective of the project SHARRP is to evaluate the risks of exposure to blood and sharps injury in a large population of home health care workers by: estimating the incidence of exposures to blood and percutaneous injuries; identifying and evaluating risk factors associated with these exposures; and assessing the availability and use of medical safety devices.

Relevant graduate courses

19.641 Principles/Accident and Prevention

This course reviews the magnitude of the "accident" problem and examines strategies for injury prevention and control. Various aspects of recent theories associated with "accident" causes are reviewed and discussed. Students will be able to identify incident causation factors, evaluate the magnitude of injury data, and design strategies for injury prevention and control.

19.685 Injury Epidemiology

A seminar covering both the methods and content of studies of the risk factors for acute physical injury in the work environment. Following a review of current knowledge on the subject and models of injury causation, the course focuses on the collection of injury data, measurement of exposure to injury risk factors, the design of surveillance systems, and suitable statistical analysis methods. Students critique the current literature in the field.

19.579 Disability Outcomes and Interventions

This course addresses the epidemiology of disability outcomes through a mix of didactic presentation and critical discussion of the literature, covering both observational and intervention studies. Qualitative research methods are also highlighted in terms of how they can enrich the study hypotheses, construct measures, etc. The first half of the course covers observational studies of individual and environmental risk factors for disability outcomes, including features of both the workplace and the community. The key design features of clinical trials are presented, at the individual and the organizational levels. Interspersed with lecture material, selected observational and intervention studies from the peer-reviewed scientific literature are evaluated with respect to study design, methodological rigor, and adequacy of statistical analysis.

For more information about this opportunity, please contact Professor David Kriebel, Department of Work Environment, University of Massachusetts Lowell. Email: David_Kriebel@uml.edu

Information about research opportunities at our partner, LMRIS can be found at:

Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety