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The Public Health Career Explorer Launches

Matches health department job openings with career interests and preparation.

A new, easy-to-use, evidence-based career assessment, the Public Health Career Explorer, has just launched to help job-seekers who are interested specifically in public health careers.   The Public Health Career Explorer career assessment tool, three years in the making, was developed at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health . Using the well-researched O*Net MyNextMove assessment, Columbia Mailman School’s Heather Krasna , PhD, EdM, MS, associate dean of career and professional development  painstakingly matched the Holland Codes (career interest codes) for each of the specific occupations which exist in health departments. The matching of public health occupations with career interest codes was part of a federally-funded research study which was published in the American Journal of Public Health : https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38091570/ . See https://www.publichealthcareers.org/assessment/intro/ to try the Career Explorer tool.   “With the increasing enrollment of students in undergraduate and graduate public health degree programs, as well as the launch of the Public Health AmeriCorps program, there is a growing need for people to identify which careers in health departments would be the best fit for themselves,” said Krasna, who is also adjunct assistant professor of health policy and management at Columbia Mailman School. This quick assessment only takes a few minutes, and provides a research-based starting point for anyone interested in public health careers to identify which roles would be the best fit for their interests.”   Once users take the assessment, they receive a list of public health careers/occupations that match their interests as well as the amount of career preparation they are planning to take on, as well as a link to explore these career pathways further. Unique among career assessments, users can also immediately click on a link to see specific, currently-active job openings at health departments across the country that match their career interests.   The assessment is launching alongside several other free, self-paced tutorials on public health careers including:  Charting your Public Health Career Path. This free, self-pace online tutorial pairs perfectly with the Public Health Careers Career Navigator Assessment, and walks participants through the decision-making process and exploration of public health careers, with fun videos, interactive exercises, and a career exploration exercise sheet they can take with them for future: https://www.train.org/main/course/1121518/details Secrets of the Government Job Search: How to Apply for Local & State Health Department Jobs. This is a free, self-paced online tutorial which explains the sometimes-confusing job application process for local and state government, including fun videos, application tips, a glossary of key terms, and much more! https://www.train.org/main/course/1121525/details

Getting Hired Video Series: Recordings of four webinars on how to find a job in the New York State Department of Health, New Jersey Department of Health, and local health departments in New York and New Jersey https://region2phtc.org/how-to-get-hired-training-series/   There also are new trainings and resources available for local, state, Tribal and territorial health departments seeking to improve their recruitment and retention process. These include: Recruitment & Retention in public health self-directed training: https://www.train.org/main/course/1112175/details New Resources and Creative Strategies for Recruiting Candidates for Health Departments https://www.train.org/main/course/1104510/details Recruitment and Retention in Public Health: Workshop Series https://www.train.org/main/training_plan/6565 Recruitment toolkit: https://region2phtc.org/recruitment-toolkit/ The research project regarding matching public health careers with Standard Occupational Classification codes was supported by the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention and the Health Resources and Services Administration, awards U81HP47167 and UR2HP47371). The public health trainings were supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), UB6HP31686, Regional Public Health Training Center Program. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author; endorsements should not be inferred as by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.

The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials was a partner in the development of PublicHealthCareers.org, a site which promotes careers in governmental public health.

Media Contact

Stephanie Berger, [email protected]

Related Information

Meet our team, heather krasna, phd.

• Associate Dean, Career Services

• News Releases

The Public Health Career Explorer launches, matching health department job openings with career interests and preparation

Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health

August 28, 2024-- A new, easy-to-use, evidence-based career assessment, the Public Health Career Explorer, has just launched to help job-seekers who are interested specifically in public health careers.

The Public Health Career Explorer career assessment tool, three years in the making, was developed at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health . Using the well-researched O*Net MyNextMove assessment, Columbia Mailman School’s Heather Krasna , PhD, EdM, MS, associate dean of career and professional development  painstakingly matched the Holland Codes (career interest codes) for each of the specific occupations which exist in health departments. The matching of public health occupations with career interest codes was part of a federally-funded research study which was published in the American Journal of Public Health: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38091570/ . See https://www.publichealthcareers.org/assessment/intro/  to try the Career Explorer tool.

“With the increasing enrollment of students in undergraduate and graduate public health degree programs, as well as the launch of the Public Health AmeriCorps program, there is a growing need for people to identify which careers in health departments would be the best fit for themselves,” said Krasna, who is also adjunct assistant professor of health policy and management at Columbia Mailman School. This quick assessment only takes a few minutes,  and provides a research-based starting point for anyone interested in public health careers to identify which roles would be the best fit for their interests.”

Once users take the assessment, they receive a list of public health careers/occupations that match their interests as well as the amount of career preparation they are planning to take on, as well as a link to explore these career pathways further. Unique among career assessments, users can also immediately click on a link to see specific, currently-active job openings at health departments across the country that match their career interests.

The assessment is launching alongside several other free, self-paced tutorials on public health careers including: 

• Charting your Public Health Career Path.  This free, self-pace online tutorial pairs perfectly with the Public Health Careers Career Navigator Assessment, and walks participants through the decision-making process and exploration of public health careers, with fun videos, interactive exercises, and a career exploration exercise sheet they can take with them for future:  https://www.train.org/main/course/1121518/details
• Secrets of the Government Job Search: How to Apply for Local & State Health Department Jobs . This is a free, self-paced online tutorial which explains the sometimes-confusing job application process for local and state government, including fun videos, application tips, a glossary of key terms, and much more!  https://www.train.org/main/course/1121525/details
• Getting Hired Video Series:  Recordings of four webinars on how to find a job in the New York State Department of Health, New Jersey Department of Health, and local health departments in New York and New Jersey  https://region2phtc.org/how-to-get-hired-training-series/

There also are new trainings and resources available for local, state, Tribal and territorial health departments seeking to improve their recruitment and retention process. These include:

• Recruitment & Retention in public health self-directed training:  https://www.train.org/main/course/1112175/details
• New Resources and Creative Strategies for Recruiting Candidates for Health Departments  https://www.train.org/main/course/1104510/details
• Recruitment and Retention in Public Health: Workshop Series  https://www.train.org/main/training_plan/6565
• Recruitment toolkit:  https://region2phtc.org/recruitment-toolkit/

The research project regarding matching public health careers with Standard Occupational Classification codes was supported by the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention and the Health Resources and Services Administration, awards U81HP47167 and UR2HP47371). The public health trainings were supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), UB6HP31686, Regional Public Health Training Center Program. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author; endorsements should not be inferred as by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.

The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials was a partner in the development of PublicHealthCareers.org, a site which promotes careers in governmental public health.

About Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Founded in 1922, the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health pursues an agenda of research, education, and service to address the critical and complex public health issues affecting New Yorkers, the nation and the world. The Columbia Mailman School is the fourth largest recipient of NIH grants among schools of public health. Its nearly 300 multi-disciplinary faculty members work in more than 100 countries around the world, addressing such issues as preventing infectious and chronic diseases, environmental health, maternal and child health, health policy, climate change and health, and public health preparedness. It is a leader in public health education with more than 1,300 graduate students from 55 nations pursuing a variety of master’s and doctoral degree programs. The Columbia Mailman School is also home to numerous world-renowned research centers, including ICAP and the Center for Infection and Immunity. For more information, please visit  www.mailman.columbia.edu .

  Contact:  Stephanie Berger, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health,  [email protected] , 917.734.8973

American Journal of Public Health

10.2105/AJPH.2023.307463

Article Title

Standard Occupational Classification Codes: Gaps in Federal Data on the Public Health Workforce

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

• Open access
• Published: 24 August 2024

Sociodemographic and work-related factors associated with psychological resilience in South African healthcare workers: a cross-sectional study

• Thandokazi Mcizana   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0002-4078-1991 1 ,
• Shahieda Adams   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3630-1855 2 ,
• Saajida Khan   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0001-8454-2215 2 , 3 , 4 &
• Itumeleng Ntatamala   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9799-0132 2  

BMC Health Services Research volume  24 , Article number:  979 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

120 Accesses

Metrics details

Psychological resilience facilitates adaptation in stressful environments and is an important personal characteristic that enables workers to navigate occupational challenges. Few studies have evaluated the factors associated with psychological resilience in healthcare workers.

To determine the prevalence and factors associated with psychological resilience in a group of South African medical doctors and ambulance personnel.

Materials and methods

This analytical cross-sectional study used secondary data obtained from two studies conducted among healthcare workers in 2019 and 2022. Self-reported factors associated with resilience, as measured by the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale-10 (CD-RISC-10), were evaluated. R statistical software was used for analysing the data and performing statistical tests.

A total of 647 healthcare workers were included in the study, of which 259 were doctors and 388 were ambulance personnel. Resilience scores were low overall (27.6 ± 6.6) but higher for ambulance personnel (28.0 ± 6.9) than for doctors (27.1 ± 6.0) ( p  = 0.006). Female gender (OR 1.94, 95%CI 1.03–3.72, p  = 0.043), job category (OR 6.94 95%CI 1.22–60.50, p  = 0.044) and overtime work (OR 13.88, 95%CI 1.61–368.00, p  = 0.044) significantly increased the odds of low resilience for doctors. Conversely, salary (OR 0.13, 95%CI 0.02–0.64, p  = 0.024) and current smoking status (OR 0.16, 95%CI 0.02–0.66, p  = 0.027) significantly reduced the odds of low resilience amongst doctors. In addition, only previous alcohol use significantly reduced the odds of low resilience for ambulance personnel (OR 0.44, 95%CI 0.20–0.94, p  = 0.038) and overall sample (OR 0.52, 95%CI 0.29–0.91, p  = 0.024).

Conclusions

Resilience was relatively low in this group of South African healthcare workers. The strong association between low resilience and individual and workplace factors provides avenues for early intervention and building resilience among healthcare workers.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

The healthcare systems of most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are under severe strain due to high patient load, significant burden of communicable and noncommunicable diseases, lack of human and financial resources, the brain drain phenomenon, corruption and poor administration [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. South Africa, an upper middle-income country, faces similar challenges, with a quadruple burden of disease including HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, high maternal and child mortality, high levels of violence and injuries and noncommunicable diseases [ 5 ]. Poor health outcomes and a disproportionate distribution of healthcare resources in the country may be ascribed to the legacy of an undemocratic political apartheid regime (1948–1993) compounded by ongoing challenges in managing the health system in a post-apartheid South Africa [ 4 , 5 ]. In 2021, for example, South Africa had a doctor-patient ratio of 80 physician per 100,000 people in South Africa, which is lower than the average in upper middle-income countries of 210 physicians per 100,000 people [ 6 ]. South Africa’s government is currently in the process of implementing a National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme to address the tremendous challenges that plague the health system [ 2 ]. However, the country’s preparedness remains uncertain, especially given the ongoing shortage of healthcare worker posts and rising unemployment in the health sector [ 5 , 7 ]. These challenges place immense pressure on employed healthcare workers, making psychological resilience an important inherent ability that can aid in supporting and protecting healthcare workers against adverse mental health outcomes and contributing to improved service delivery.

Psychological resilience is an important personal characteristic that enables healthcare workers to navigate the challenges encountered in their occupation [ 8 ]. Herrman and colleagues explored the evolution of the term in their narrative review and concluded that fundamentally, resilience is the ‘inherent ability’ for one to adapt positively following adversity or stressful events [ 9 ]. As such, psychological resilience describes an individual’s coping mechanism, optimism, self-efficacy, high levels of hope and thriving mental health amid adversity and challenging circumstances [ 10 ]. Research on the role of psychological resilience as a protective factor in frontline healthcare workers has increased recently during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic [ 11 ]. Much of the research in this area has been conducted in high-income countries (HICs) and China, and little is known about the factors that predict psychological resilience in workers in LMICs, including South Africa [ 11 ]. A systematic review on resilience among primary healthcare workers, found that most research on the topic primarily frames resilience as an explanatory variable in relation to burnout [ 12 ]. This study therefore aimed to determine the prevalence, and factors associated with psychological resilience of healthcare workers practising in the South African healthcare system.

Study design and setting

This is an analytical cross-sectional study using secondary data obtained from two cross-sectional studies of healthcare workers in South Africa. The first study on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) included ambulance personnel employed by the Western Cape Department of Health, and data was collected between 15 November 2019 and 17 January 2020 [ 13 ]. This study included 388 responses out of approximately 2000 ambulance personnel. The second study on burnout included medical doctors employed in three public sector hospitals in the Eastern Cape province, and data was collected between 1 April and 31 May 2022 [ 14 ]. This study included 260 responses out of 430 doctors. The present study included data of all healthcare workers who had completed the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale-10 (CD-RISC-10) questionnaire and relevant sociodemographic and occupational questions.

Measurements

This study used secondary data generated from self-administered questionnaires that consisted of sociodemographic factors, work-related factors, and the CD-RISC-10 questionnaire.

Sociodemographic and work-related factors

The data obtained from the questionnaires included self-reported information on age, gender, language, marital status, job category, professional qualifications, overtime work, salary, and length of service. In addition, data on mental health and medical history, including self-reported mental health conditions and substance use (smoking, alcohol use, illicit and prescription drugs), year of debut, and the use of substances to manage work-related stress, were obtained.

Psychological resilience (outcome variable) was measured using the 10-item CD-RISC questionnaire. The CD-RISC-10 is a self-administered 10-item questionnaire, which is a shorter version of the CD-RISC-25. Participants identified their adaptive behaviours in stressful situations and scored them on a 5-point Likert scale (0 = not at all true, 4 = true nearly all the time) [ 15 ]. The resulting scores ranged between 0 and 40. This scale has previously been reported to be a reliable and efficient measure of psychological resilience for adults [ 16 ]. In addition, it has previously been validated for use in South Africa by Pretorius and Padmanabhanunni as a measure of psychological resilience and has been used in several studies of South African healthcare workers [ 3 , 13 , 14 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]. Written permission to use the scale was previously obtained [ 13 , 14 ].

Data analysis

After ethical approval, the secondary data were received and cleaned in password-protected Microsoft Excel. R statistical software (version 4.3.1) was used for analysing the data and performing the statistical tests. Descriptive statistics for continuous variables in this study are presented as the means (standard deviations) and medians (interquartile ranges) where appropriate. In addition, descriptive statistics for categorical variables are presented as proportions.

Mann‒Whitney and Kruskal‒Wallis tests were used to determine significant differences in CD-RISC-10 scores. In addition, unadjusted logistic regression and adjusted logistic regression (adjusted for age and gender) were performed. Low resilience, as an outcome measure, was defined as a CD-RISC-10 score less than 25.5 [ 20 ]. Variables from the adjusted logistic regression analysis with a p value less than 0.250 were selected for the multivariable logistic regression model to investigate factors associated with increased resilience score. The odds ratios (OR), 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) and p values (p) were calculated for both the univariable and multivariable analyses. A p value of less than 0.050 was considered the cut-off point for statistical significance.

Missing data

Only the age factor had missing data of more than 1% of the total recorded values and thus necessitated imputation (see Supplementary Table S1 and Supplementary Fig. S1 online). Age is also important when performing this regression analysis, as age has previously been reported to be an important confounder of psychological resilience and needs to be adjusted for when performing regression analysis [ 11 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]. Multiple imputation was chosen because it results in valid statistical inferences [ 24 ]. To assess the sensitivity of the results with respect to the multiple imputation method chosen, multiple imputation using the three methods available in the Multivariate Imputation by Chained Equation (MICE) package in R were performed (see Supplementary Table S2 online). The imputed data from the Classification and regression tree (CART) method was chosen for use in the following regression analysis, given its minimal impact on the distribution of the age factor. Supplementary Fig. S2 shows the distribution of the age factor before and after CART imputation.

From the original datasets received (648 records), only one record was removed because the participant indicated that they were gender nonconforming, resulting in several skewed results. In total therefore, 647 observations were included in the present analysis, of which 259 were from doctors and 388 were from ambulance personnel.

Sociodemographic and work-related characteristics

Among the 259 doctors, the majority, 150 (57.9%) were female, while most ambulance personnel, 213 (54.9%) were male (Table  1 ). Most of the doctors, 171 (66.0%) were English speaking and 110 (42.5%) were in the 20–29 years age group, while most of the ambulance personnel, 178 (45.9%) were Afrikaans speaking and, 144 (37.1%) were in the 30–39 years age group. Doctors’ years of service in the current role were lower, with a median of 2 (IQR: 4), while ambulance personnel had a median of 7 (IQR: 9). A greater percentage of doctors, 251 (96.9%) reported working overtime than, 266 (68.6%) ambulance personnel.

Substance use, mental health, and work-related stress management

The prevalence of smoking was greater among ambulance personnel, 118 (30.4%) than among, 23 (8.9%) of doctors, while current alcohol usage was 166 (64.1%) for doctors, greater than 200 (51.5%) for ambulance personnel (Table  2 ). Only 18 (2.8%) of the overall sample reported current use of illicit substances or drugs. A quarter of the doctors, 65 (25.1%), reported having been diagnosed with a mental health condition compared to 43 (11.1%) of the ambulance personnel. In addition, 45 (17.4%) of doctors reported being on treatment for a mental health condition, compared to, 28 (7.2%) of ambulance personnel.

Regarding managing work-related stress (WRS), more than a quarter, 103 (26.5%) of the ambulance personnel self-reported the need to smoke to manage WRS, while 53 (20.5%) of the doctors reported the need to use alcohol to manage WRS. Interestingly, 29 (4.5%) of the overall sample felt the need to use illicit drugs to manage WRS, which is higher than the current prevalence of illicit drug use. Most participants supported the provision of psychological counselling, 492 (76.0%) and addressing staff shortages, 483 (74.7%) to assist with reducing WRS.

Prevalence of resilience

The overall average CD-RISC-10 score was 27.6 (± 6.6) among the 647 healthcare workers in this study (Table  2 ). The average CD-RISC-10 score for the ambulance personnel was 28.0 (± 6.9), which was significantly higher than the average score of 27.1 (± 6.0) for the doctors ( p  = 0.006). The total score for the CD-RISC-10 can be classified into a 4-level variable using quantiles: lowest (0–24), low (25–28), moderate (29–32), and highest (33–40) [ 15 ]. More than half of the doctors (58.7%) were classified as having the lowest or low resilience. However, for ambulance personnel, the majority (54.2%) were classified as having moderate or high resilience.

Factors associated with resilience

Bivariable analysis was performed to examine differences in CD-RISC-10 scores across several sociodemographic and work-related variables (Table  3 ). Compared with female doctors, male doctors had significantly greater resilience scores ( p  < 0.001). Those in certain job categories, such as senior doctors and ambulance personnel, had significantly greater resilience than did junior doctors ( p  = 0.019). In addition, doctors who earned in the highest salary bracket demonstrated greater resilience than did those who earned less ( p  = 0.020). Doctors who were current smokers had greater resilience (30.7) than those who had never smoked (27.2) or were previous smokers (26.7) ( p  = 0.012). In addition, a history of alcohol use significantly increased resilience for ambulance personnel (30.5) compared to current users (27.6) and never users (27.1) ( p  = 0.002). Participants who self-reported as having been diagnosed with a mental health condition had significantly lower resilience scores compared to those who have not, for doctors ( p  = 0.037), ambulance personnel ( p  = 0.010) and overall sample ( p  < 0.001). In addition, ambulance personnel and the overall sample currently on treatment for a mental health condition had significantly lower resilience scores ( p  = 0.029 and p  = 0.002 respectively). Lastly, participants who felt the need to drink alcohol to manage WRS had significantly lower resilience scores amongst doctors ( p  = 0.034), ambulance personnel ( p  = 0.048) and overall sample ( p  = 0.002).

Unadjusted (see Supplementary Table S3 online) and adjusted (Supplementary Table S4 online) logistic regression analyses were also performed. Table  4 below provides the results from the multivariable logistic regression analysis performed with selected variables with p value less than 0.25 from Supplementary Table S4 online. For doctors, female gender, job category and overtime work significantly increased the odds of low resilience (OR 1.94, 95%CI 1.03–3.72, p  = 0.043; OR 6.94, 95%CI 1.22–60.50, p  = 0.044 and OR 13.88, 95%CI 1.61–368.00, p  = 0.044 respectively) (Table  4 ). Conversely, salary and current smoking status significantly reduced the odds of low resilience amongst doctors (OR 0.13, 95%CI 0.02–0.64, p  = 0.024 and OR 0.16, 95%CI 0.02–0.66, p  = 0.027 respectively). In addition, for ambulance personnel and overall sample, only previous alcohol use significantly reduced the odds of low resilience (OR 0.44, 95%CI 0.20–0.94, p  = 0.038 and OR 0.52, 95%CI 0.29–0.91, p  = 0.024 respectively). It should also be noted that the results from the multivariable logistic analysis reported in Table  4 are consistent with the results from the bivariable analysis in Table  3 .

This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of resilience and determinants of psychological resilience among a group of healthcare workers in South Africa comprising doctors and ambulance personnel.

The study found the prevalence of psychological resilience among healthcare workers was relatively low, at 27.6 (± 6.6). The average score of the ambulance personnel (28.0 ± 6.9) was greater than that of the doctors (27.1 ± 6.0). Kang and colleagues reported an overall average score of 29.0 (± 6.8) for a group of ambulance personnel in China, which is higher than the overall average score obtained in this study [ 25 ]. A study comparing doctors and ambulance technicians in Spain, reported an overall average score of 30.6 (± 5.0), which was higher than that obtained in the present study [ 26 ]. A longitudinal study on healthcare workers in South Africa reported average scores of 26.7 (± 8.8) and 30 (± 6.7) for the two time points considered [ 3 ]. The average resilience score for the second time point of the longitudinal study was greater than that of the present study. Furthermore, two studies on Malaysian healthcare workers reported overall average scores of 28.6 (± 6.3) and 30.0 (± 6.3), respectively, both of which were higher than those in the present study [ 22 , 27 ]. Zhou and colleagues, however, reported an overall average score of 23.2 (± 9.3) in their study of Chinese resident doctors, which is lower than that obtained in the present study [ 28 ]. This variability in the level of resilience observed may be due to differences in the study context (population sampled, time when the study was conducted), resources available in the healthcare system and differences in cultural values and norms, which may result in different coping styles among healthcare workers [ 5 ]. Overall, the results from this study were consistent with results from comparative studies on the resilience of healthcare workers when considering the standard deviations reported.

The study revealed a statistically significant association between psychological resilience and gender, with females having significantly lower resilience than males. These results are consistent with previous studies on psychological resilience showing that female gender is associated with lower resilience scores [ 12 , 22 , 29 , 30 ]. This could be attributed to females assuming multiple roles at home and in the workplace, experiencing more emotional exhaustion and being more sensitive and susceptible to stress [ 12 , 29 ]. The difference could also be due to social desirability bias, with males answering in a way that portrays an image of being able to manage pressure better [ 22 ].

We observed that doctors who were current smokers had greater average resilience scores than did those who were previous smokers and those who had never smoked before. These results contrast with the results of previous studies in which current smokers were found to have significantly lower psychological resilience [ 31 ]. It is probable that current smoking may be reflective of a coping mechanism and could mask low levels of resilience among current smokers. Substance use and medication use have been used as maladaptive coping mechanisms to address mental health issues and work-related stress [ 14 , 32 ].

Similarly, in ambulance personnel and the overall sample, a significant relationship was found between psychological resilience and alcohol history, with previous alcohol users having reduced odds of low resilience. Guidelines for rehabilitation programs (alcohol and smoking) consider improving resilience to be necessary for preventing substance use onset, abuse problems and relapse [ 31 , 33 , 34 ]. In addition, Yamashita and colleagues reported that a lower relapse risk was associated with greater resilience [ 35 ]. It is also probable that previous alcohol use may be reflective of a coping mechanism and could mask low levels of resilience among previous alcohol users.

This study found no significant associations between psychological resilience and other sociodemographic or lifestyle factors, such as age, home language and relationship status. This is consistent with the results of previous research on resilience [ 18 , 36 , 37 ].

Years in the current role and professional qualifications were not found to be significant predictors of the CD-RISC-10 score in the present study. Wang and colleagues argued that senior healthcare workers have better experience and professional skills to address complex situations that arise in the workplace [ 21 ]. Previous researchers have reported that years in practice was positively associated with psychological resilience [ 20 , 23 ]. Afshari and colleagues noted that an increase in healthcare workers’ education and work experience may be linked to the progression of skills, which results in the development of positive coping strategies, leading to greater resilience [ 38 ]. Herman and colleagues noted that these inconsistencies observed between psychological resilience and predictive factors may be due to differences in study methodologies and the definition of resilience used by the investigators [ 9 ].

Notably, the average resilience of ambulance personnel was significantly greater than that of doctors in this study, similar to the findings of Mantas-Jiménez and colleagues, who compared doctors and ambulance technicians in Spain [ 26 ]. This could be attributable to the social demographic and work-related characteristics of ambulance personnel compared to doctors in the study. Ambulance personnel were older and mostly male, had longer years of service and worked less overtime compared to the doctors. Organisational factors such as the culture within the ambulance service could be different to the medical hospital-based environment. These factors have all been reported previously as factors associated with higher resilience for healthcare workers [ 11 ].

Overtime work was found to be significant negatively associated with resilience among doctors in the present study. These results are in line with the interventions recommended by the healthcare workers in the present study to reduce WRS, with most of the participants indicating that addressing staff shortages was important for reducing WRS. A study on nurses in China, also found that working longer hours a day resulted in significantly lower psychological resilience [ 39 ]. However, Rossouw and colleagues did not find any significant relationship between resilience and overtime hours in their study of healthcare workers in South Africa [ 18 ]. High workload and occupational stressors were likely to lead to low job satisfaction, poor work performance and high job turnover for healthcare workers, resulting in a vicious cycle and ultimately leading to burnout and low resilience [ 30 ].

The present study revealed a significantly negative association between psychological resilience and self-reported mental health conditions and treatment for mental health conditions for the overall sample. Past research on resilience has found that psychological resilience has been identified to have a protective role against mental health issues [ 40 , 41 ]. A study on Indonesian medical students, reported that higher resilience was moderately correlated with lower scores for depressive and anxious symptoms [ 42 ]. In addition, Keragholi and colleagues, in their study of Iranian ambulance personnel, also reported that mental health status was negatively associated with resilience [ 40 ]. A study on South African healthcare workers reported that healthcare workers using medication or other forms of treatment for their anxiety or depression symptoms had significantly lower resilience than did those not using medication [ 18 ]. Furthermore, stigma and denial related to mental health might impact the ability of healthcare workers to seek help, which could also lead to underreporting in research studies [ 18 ].

The resilience score of participants who reported needing to use alcohol to manage WRS was significantly lower than that of participants who reported not needing to use alcohol. In addition, the preference of most participants (76.7%) was for the provision of psychological counselling as an intervention that could be provided by institutions to assist with reducing WRS. This is a positive coping strategy compared to substance use, which is recognised as a maladaptive coping mechanism used by those with mental health issues or WRS [ 32 ]. In addition, resilience interacts with stress to impact on the development of addiction and relapse [ 33 ]. Other studies have also identified the protective role of psychological resilience on WRS [ 43 ].

Strengths and limitations

The primary strength of this study was that it included a large population of healthcare workers in South Africa. In addition, both previous surveys used to collect data for this study had good response rates. The study also used a validated and standardised questionnaire to measure the outcome variable, which provides an opportunity to compare the results of this study with those of previous studies.

This study had several limitations. First, as a secondary data analysis was undertaken, the information available was limited to what had been provided and collected from the previous two studies. Second, causation cannot be inferred via a cross-sectional study design, and the risk factors identified need to be interpreted accordingly. Third, as self-reported data were used, the risk of social desirability bias was high, as respondents may have been influenced by stigma associated with substance use and mental health. In addition, recall bias may have occurred during the initial data collection phase where the participants’ memory was relied upon. Most questions used in this study, however, did not require recall over many months. Fourth, selection bias was largely unavoidable, as participation in the surveys was voluntary, and those who had been experiencing problems such as PTSD or burnout may have been more likely to complete the survey, as PTSD and burnout were the focus of the primary studies. In addition, confidentiality concerns may also affect participation and contribute to bias. The initial investigators had put in place measures to mitigate this bias, including introductory letters to explain the data handling procedure and the preservation of confidentiality. Last, the healthy worker effect may result in the overestimation of healthcare workers’ resilience status since those with low levels of resilience may have already left active work.

Conclusion and recommendations

Resilience was relatively low in this group of South African healthcare workers compared to similar studies globally, highlighting the need to build resilience among healthcare workers in South Africa. This study demonstrated that resources need to be directed towards building resilience among female healthcare workers, those working long hours and earning lower income. In addition, support such as psychological counselling should be offered to healthcare workers who have been diagnosed with mental health conditions. Further research is needed to better characterise the sociodemographic and work-related factors impacting the psychological resilience of healthcare workers in South Africa. Additional research could focus on resilience specifically, consider a larger and more representative sample and include qualitative research methods. This will assist in understanding determinants of psychological resilience and may inform intervention strategies that would build psychological resilience in the healthcare workforce in South Africa.

Data availability

The data are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.

Abbreviations

Classification and regression tree

Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale

Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale 10

Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale 25

95% Confidence Interval

Coronavirus disease

Emergency medical services

Healthcare Workers

High-income countries

Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

Interquartile Range

Low-and middle-income countries

Multivariate Imputation by Chained Equation

Not applicable

National Health Insurance

Probability Value

Posttraumatic stress disorder

Standard deviation

Work-Related Stress

South African Rand

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the medical doctors and ambulance personnel who voluntarily participate in the primary data collection.

This research was partly funded by an award granted by the University of Cape Town’s Division of Actuarial Science, School of management studies and the Faculty of Health Sciences Research Committee.

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Thandokazi Mcizana

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Shahieda Adams, Saajida Khan & Itumeleng Ntatamala

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T.M. conceptualised the study and was responsible for the data analysis, initial write-up and subsequent manuscript revisions. I.N. provided part of the dataset and assisted with study conceptualisation, data analysis and write-up of this study. S.A. assisted with study conceptualisation, data analysis and write-up of this study. S.K. provided part of the dataset and made editorial manuscript revisions. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Mcizana, T., Adams, S., Khan, S. et al. Sociodemographic and work-related factors associated with psychological resilience in South African healthcare workers: a cross-sectional study. BMC Health Serv Res 24 , 979 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-11430-0

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Population Health Over the Next Decade: Major Challenges and Policy Prospects

This year marks the 100th anniversary of The Milbank Quarterly . For the past century, the Quarterly has served the public health, medical, and health policy communities by publishing timely, rigorous, evidence‐based research and policy‐focused commentaries. Now, on the occasion of the journal's centennial, there is cause for both celebration and reflection.

Initially named The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly Bulletin , the inaugural issue in 1923 reported on the Fund's Health and Tuberculosis demonstrations in New York State. These demonstrations emanated from the Fund's mission “to improve the health of individuals and populations by applying the findings of the best available research and relevant experiential learning to health policy and practice.” Volume 1, Number 1 of the Bulletin was the first in a series of quarterly reports on the Fund's work in cooperation with the New York State Department of Health to build a public health infrastructure by establishing County Health Districts and local boards of health in towns to undertake tuberculosis case finding surveys. 1

Over the course of the next decade, the journal played an instrumental role in charting the progress of public health campaigns to reduce the prevalence of tuberculosis and mitigate its effects in both rural and urban communities across New York State. 2 During this period, the journal published numerous articles on public health efforts to control diphtheria, pertussis, and other diseases of global concern in England, Russia, China, and Yugoslavia. 3 These various updates were valuable contributions to the fight against communicable diseases in the early 20 th century. Thus began the journal's legacy of publishing action‐oriented research evidence aimed at improving public health.

In 1934, the Bulletin changed its name to The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly and expanded its scope of interests. Noteworthy articles during the mid‐1930s included a series of essays and reports that spoke to broader issues of national health policy. At the height of the Great Depression when the Social Security Act was being debated in Congress, the journal published: an essay on socialized capitalism by Albert G. Milbank 4 ; an essay on the costs of medical care by I.S. Falk, 5 a noted economist and Social Security Board member; an essay on the health effects of the Great Depression; 6 a proposed health plan for the nation; 7 and a report by Ray Lyman Wilbur on the findings of the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, which had examined physician practices in the United States and raised the prospect of implementing national health insurance. 8

In the ensuing decades, as the journal's name changed to The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly: Health and Society in 1973 and later to The Milbank Quarterly in 1986, it transformed from a “journal of public health and health care policy” to “a multidisciplinary journal of population health and health policy.” 9 Most importantly, it broadened its intellectual reach and gained an international reputation for publishing evidence‐based original research and insightful commentaries by leading scholars on important issues in population health and health policy. On the occasion of the Fund's centennial in 2005, the Quarterly's editorial team recognized 35 articles as “classics” 10 that were reprinted in the December 2005 issue (Volume 83), along with a history of the Quarterly and its editors. Foremost among these classics was Avedis Donabedian's 1966 landmark paper 11 that set the standard for evaluating the quality of medical care. It remains the most highly cited article in the journal's archive.

More recently, the current editorial team identified several additional seminal works that have withstood the test of time and continue to resonate with contemporary researchers and policymakers, including:

• Edgar Sydenstricker's 1935 treatise 12 on the changing concepts of public health;
• Thomas McKeown's 1961 prophecy 13 for the next 40 years in public health;
• John and Sonja McKinlay's 1977 assessment 14 of the value of medical measures in contributing to the decline in mortality;
• Edward Wagner and colleagues’ 1996 article 15 outlining a chronic care model for treating individuals with chronic illnesses; and
• Barbara Starfield and colleagues’ 2005 analysis 16 of the contribution of primary care to health systems and population health.

The Quarterly historically has focused on scholarship that is inquisitive, principled, pragmatic, and future‐oriented. While its rich history derives from the Fund's century‐long mission to improve the health of individuals and populations, the Fund in recent years has come to recognize the vital importance of looking at population health through an equity lens. To that end, health equity now is an integral part of the Fund's mission as well as a principal area of editorial interest for the Quarterly .

Today, some four hundred issues after the launch of the Bulletin , we celebrate the journal's enduring legacy with a special issue dedicated to the future of population health. Composed of papers that address the most critical challenges facing population health over the next ten years, the issue offers insights into these challenges along with potential solutions – policies and strategies – for overcoming them.

Planning for the special issue began two years ago when the Quarterly's editorial team explored meaningful ways to commemorate the upcoming milestone. A retrospective of the journal's classic articles was proposed, but the team chose instead to look to the future. The three of us took on the role of coeditors and recruited an advisory group – Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University, Jennifer Karas Montez of Syracuse University, Jamila Michener of Cornell University, Ninez Ponce of UCLA, and Rashawn Ray of the Brookings Institution and the University of Maryland – to assist in selecting topics of greatest concern and in identifying potential authors. We then invited a diverse, multidisciplinary group of leading scholars to reflect on the gains and pitfalls of past policy efforts and to contribute forward‐looking essays on 35 different topics germane to population health policy. After receiving first drafts, we convened the authors in a collaborative workshop that elicited valuable peer review and synergistic collegial exchange of ideas regarding how to strengthen each paper. Based on this feedback, authors revised and refined their essays at least one more time. We are indebted to them for their outstanding contributions and to the editorial assistants – Alessa Erawan, Amanda Katchmar, Nick Garcia, and Mary Louise Gilburg – who supported manuscript management and workshop preparation throughout the editorial process.

The special issue is organized according to six broad thematic areas:

• ▪ Macro and Structural Drivers of Population Health – Topics include: upstream policy changes to improve population health and health equity; the perils of medicalizing population health; how to frame commercial determinants of health; human health and wellbeing in a warming world; immigration and immigrant policies in relation to health and health equity; the effects of urbanization on population health; and futureproofing social welfare policy.
• ▪ State‐level and Municipal‐level Policies and Strategies – Topics include: state policy contexts in relation to population health; the politics of population health; cities as platforms for population health; and the new era of restrictive abortion policy in the United States.
• ▪ Key Issues in Population Health Equity – Topics include: equity‐centered data to achieve health equity; three core principles of racism and health; the future of social determinants of health; child poverty and health; dynamic changes in the association between education and health; the need for affordable, accessible, and adequate housing; and policing and population health.
• ▪ Major Population Health Challenges – Topics include: obesity and chronic disease; the future of the US overdose crisis; improving older adults’ health; the future of public mental health; alcohol use and public health; the future of firearm injury prevention; the future of road safety; and the black‐white disparity in preterm birth.
• ▪ Public Health Systems and Structures – Topics include: ensuring an adequate public health infrastructure; public health preparedness and lessons from the COVID pandemic; transforming public health data systems to advance population health; judicial power and influence on personal and population health; and the global health architecture needed to advance population health worldwide.
• ▪ US Health Care System – Topics include: building a population health impact pyramid for medicine; the role of primary care in improving population health; the workforce needed to address population health; and the next generation of payment reforms for population health.

There are many other issues and topics that are addressed in multiple papers across the thematic areas, including the large and widening inequalities in population health outcomes within subpopulations defined by race, ethnicity, geography, and other social characteristics. In addition, the manifold ways in which the COVID‐19 pandemic not only damaged population health but also starkly revealed the many weaknesses and fault lines in U.S. systems of health care, public health, and social and economic well‐being are addressed in several papers.

We invite you to dive into the issue, but first, we believe it is important to establish a common understanding of what we and the authors mean by use of the term “population health.”

Population Health

Population health is often viewed as the collection of metrics that provide informative summaries of health outcomes in a population, including such measures as life expectancy, leading causes of death, infant and child mortality rates, rates of injury and disease, and the prevalence of health‐promoting and health risk behaviors such as vaccinations and tobacco use. From a historical perspective, however, population health is a long‐standing multidisciplinary science that focuses on understanding the patterns and distributions of health outcomes and their causes in populations primarily defined by geopolitical spaces and social characteristics such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, immigration status, and socioeconomic position. 17 Using the theories and methods of the social sciences and population sciences (i.e., demography, epidemiology, geography, complex systems), population health has been developing as a specialized field of scientific inquiry for more than two centuries. 1

Even though populations are comprised of individual people and health is expressed in individual bodies, population health as a scientific endeavor is focused on understanding, explaining, and intervening upon the myriad factors and processes that work at levels above and beyond the individual. This includes important population‐level processes such as herd immunity, tipping points in the spread of health‐protecting behaviors, and life expectancy, which is a simulated estimate of the average life expectancy of a cohort of babies born into a population if they—as an aggregate—were to go through life experiencing current age‐specific mortality rates. Population health includes an understanding of how patterns of migration, fertility, and mortality interconnect in ways that are important to understanding population health outcomes differences within and across countries. 18 , 19 In addition, population health involves understanding how macro‐level factors in society—including the political economy, culture, social systems, and public policy—shape all the ways in which physical, social, and built environments and resources that matter for health are produced, molded, and distributed.

Historically, significant attention in the field of population health has been devoted to elucidating the upstream (structural or macro‐level), midstream (community or meso‐level), and downstream (individual or micro‐level) social or non‐medical determinants of health. For example, Szreter in his writings on the 200‐year history of population health emphasized that the Industrial Revolution and the explosive urban growth that accompanied it fueled a strong focus on how physical and social environments were causing a host of new health problems for the masses, while wealthy elites were experiencing improved health at the same time. 20 Similarly, social movements and public health efforts in Europe and the United States in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries were primarily focused on the strong and obvious link among poverty, environmental exposures, and disease and suffering. 21 , 22

As a related discipline, public health is a field of practice primarily grounded in the role of governments and partnering organizations in protecting, promoting, and assuring health, preventing disease/injury, prolonging life, and striving for health equity in populations, primarily defined as geopolitical spaces. 23 Both public health and population health, as interrelated fields of science, practice, and policy, are focused on the protectors and drivers of positive health outcomes as well as the risks and causes of injury, illness, and death within and across populations and subpopulations. This includes a primary focus on the upstream macro‐level structural determinants of health, how they flow to communities and to individuals, and where the key flash points are for public policy reform and other interventions that promote prevention and equity. 24

A deep and important focus of population health science is understanding the ways in which upstream structural factors—such as macroeconomic forces, cultural factors, social systems and institutions, and policy/law—are the fundamental drivers of socioeconomic stratification in society, which in turn cascade down to impact the more proximate psychosocial and material conditions for health, including food, shelter, safety, clean environments, and medical care. 25 Mitigating the health risks that accompany poverty, food insecurity, unaffordable housing, unsafe neighborhoods, poor quality education, lack of transportation, lack of health insurance, etc. will not be achieved by addressing these health‐related social needs at the individual level. It requires understanding and addressing the root social, economic, political, and cultural drivers of these risks and their unequal distributions within communities and subpopulations, including the important role of structural and systemic racism. As Rose eloquently articulated, there is an important distinction between sick individuals and sick populations, primarily because individuals’ risk of illness cannot be separated from the risk distribution within the population to which they belong. 26 This is a fundamental insight for prevention. If strategies for prevention focus only on individuals perceived as “high risk” for a behavior, disease, or injury, the incidence and prevalence at the population level will not be changed as much as with efforts to address root causes at the macro‐ and meso‐levels and attempts to shift the distribution of risk throughout the population.

The causes and consequences of different aspects of population health are complex and intertwined, driven by important historical, cultural, and social forces. Nonetheless, some important key points regarding population health for this special issue of Milbank Quarterly include the following. First, the role of public policy in both creating and addressing population health problems cannot be understated. Public policy is a root‐cause of the various ways in which social, economic, and political systems create unfair distributions of the resources that matter for health, and thus public policy is also a primary target for intervention and reform. Second, population health research and interventions require a sophisticated understanding of the limits of individual medical care in addressing socially driven population health problems and inequities. Population health is distinctly different from the more recent “population health management” efforts that have emerged within health plans and health care systems that are primarily focused on “sick individuals” and do not address the upstream systemic, socioeconomic, and public policy drivers of population health problems and inequities.

Emerging and Cross‐Cutting Themes and Implications

As the definition of population health makes abundantly clear, health is inextricable from the conditions and forces that create and shape the world around us, and the responsibility of the population health scholar is to engage with the broader world in a way that is based on evidence but also with a clear eye to the pragmatic goal of achieving better health in populations, and to narrowing health gaps. The papers in this issue all, in one way or another, center around this mission, a mission that has been embodied in the Milbank Quarterly's century of publication. While we leave it to the reader to consider the key themes that emerge from the papers, we want to highlight four cross‐cutting topics that emerge from these papers that reinforce both the mission of population health and point to future directions in the field.

First, the consensus in the field about the importance of macro or structural drivers of population health, while consistent with some of the foundational definitions of population health, is at odds with where most of the empirical scholarship in the field resides. This suggests a mismatch between the importance of scholarship about federal, state, and municipal‐level drivers of health, and how much attention is paid to these areas in the empirical evidence. There are many reasons for this mismatch, centrally perhaps the predominance of funding for individual‐centric research emerging from a persistently biomedical orientation of the research funding enterprise in the United States. However, if the health of populations is to be improved through changing the context within which populations live, nothing short of paying more vigorous attention to this context will substantially “move the needle” on health. This calls for continued and more determined advocacy for scholarship of consequence and for funding and other structures to support such work.

Second, there is a need for greater emphasis on intervention scholarship, work that documents the effects, and unintended consequences, of policy interventions, to the end of creating a body of generalizable literature to guide policy implementation across contexts. Many of the papers in this special issue refer to policy efforts that were implemented with the aim of improving population health, but several of these efforts were neither formally evaluated nor replicated in other contexts. A secondary concern here is that, absent empirical evaluations of policy interventions, such interventions are vulnerable to changes in political leadership. A more robust scholarship of policy interventions stands to be more resilient to these changes and to make policy approaches appealing to different political constituencies.

Third, the work of population health scholarship is far from complete. While the papers presented here capture the state of the science, and while a review of what has been published during the past hundred years amply illustrates how far the science has progressed, we need to go much further to ensure that the science serves to advance the health of populations as much as it should. The shortcomings of the field range from lacking adequate data to characterize much of the context that shapes people's health, to having limited empirical tools to integrate meaningful quantitative and qualitative data to the end of generating solutions that can be practicably implemented. Moreover, the shortcomings of the COVID era, where the consequences of a global pandemic were experienced most heavily by groups that were already in poorer health, despite this being well predicted right at the outset of the pandemic, elucidates how much further we need to go as a field to have a science that is responsive to the challenges of our time, and that can point to interventions that make a difference to the health of populations.

Fourth, and finally, the needs and imperatives of population health scholarship are continuing to evolve, much as they have done over the past 100 years. Many of the syntheses presented in this issue highlight unsettled areas of both scholarship and practice. The intersections of political forces and civil movements make for an uncertain landscape, wherein the next steps in the field remain to be written. This dynamism, of course, makes the field of population health interesting, and suggests tremendous opportunities for impact by emerging scholars over the coming decades. It is also somewhat disconcerting to know that after a hundred years of publication in the area, there is still so much to document in population health and so much more where we aspire to do better. It is our hope that this special collection of papers in the Quarterly serves as a marker along the road to ever stronger scholarship, more effective public policies and other interventions, and ever better population health.

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College of Medicine Rockford

University of illinois chicago urban health program health career pathway programs.

UIC UHP Health Career Pathway Programs

The University of Illinois Chicago Urban Health Program hosts the UIC UHP Health Career Pathway Programs on the UIC Health Sciences Campus-Rockford, 1601 Parkview Ave., Rockford, IL 61107. The program overview and eligibility requirements below outline the criteria for high school students interested in experiencing health sciences in a hands-on environment.

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

• For high school students in Rockford, Harlem, Belvidere and surrounding high schools
• Mentoring opportunities with college and health sciences students
• Exposure to health careers
• Hands-on clinical activities (e.g. CPR, suturing, Stop the Bleed)
• College admissions and financial aid workshops
• Studying and test-taking skills workshop
• Health advocacy/public health
• Community-based experiences through shadowing and volunteering
• The program meets for six hours on 25 selected Saturdays (Sept. - June)
• Participants will receive a paid stipend

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

• Must meet income requirements, be a first-generation student or attend an underperforming high school
• Must be a U.S. citizen, non-citizen national, permanent resident
• Individuals on temporary or student visas are not eligible
• Must have an interest in a health career

For more information or questions, please contact the program liaison at phone 815-395-5740 or email [email protected] .

Funded by a grant from the U.S.  Department of Health and Human Services.

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Job and career influences on the career commitment of health care executives : The mediating effect of job satisfaction

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While there is considerable evidence supporting the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment, the relationship between the antecedents of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and career commitment are not clearly understood. This study seeks to clarify whether these antecedents have an effect independent of job satisfaction on career commitment or whether these antecedents are mediated by job satisfaction.

Designmethodologyapproach

In total, 2,799 questionnaires were mailed out to members of the American College of Healthcare Executives ACHE. The responses received were 643 22.9 percent and after eliminating retirees or students, a sample of 456 respondents currently employed in the health care industry was obtained. Path analysis was conducted to test the hypothetical relationships between work situation, career experiences and career commitment.

It was found that job satisfaction mediated the influences of job tenure and career pattern on career commitment. Job satisfaction partially mediated the influences of perceived job security and one's satisfaction with career on career commitment. Both of these measures had a direct influence on career commitment. Career experience such as sector change was also positively associated with career commitment.

Research limitationsimplications

While the research offers some insights into the factors affecting the career commitment of health care executives, the sample was limited to respondents who were members of the American College of Healthcare Executives, and thus may not represent the views of all managers in the health care sector.

Practical implications

To retain highvalued health care workers it is important that an organization has a work environment that enhances their commitment to their occupation as well as their careers.

Originalityvalue

This study clarifies the influence of job satisfaction on the career commitment of health care managers during a very dynamic period.

Related collections

Emerald: Healthier Lives

Most cited references 33

• Abstract : not found
• Article : not found

PREDICTORS OF OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE CAREER SUCCESS: A META-ANALYSIS

The measurement and prediction of career commitment

A longitudinal analysis of the antecedents of organizational commitment., author and article information , contributors, affiliations, custom metadata, comment on this article, similar content 169 .

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• "They are human beings, they are Swazi": intersecting stigmas and the positive health, dignity and prevention needs of HIV-positive men who have sex with men in Swaziland. Authors: Caitlin Kennedy , Stefan Baral , Rebecca Fielding-Miller …
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Office of Research Training, Diversity, and Disparities Newsletter, August 2024

What’s New at NIDA

Changes to nida’s diversity supplement program .

ORTDD is excited to announce some changes to the NIDA Diversity Supplement Program! For more than 30 years, NIH has made available supplements to existing grants to provide research opportunities, training, and mentorship to enhance the diversity of the biomedical research workforce.  NIDA is proud to participate in this NIH-wide program, and our team at the ORTDD would like to spread the word to PIs on active NIDA awards as well as to potential applicants about this opportunity.  PIs are encouraged to participate, so long as an active grant mechanism is eligible, there is sufficient time remaining during the initial award period for the supplement, and the and the PI is committed to mentoring and career development for the candidate. K award grants are not eligible to have Diversity Supplements, but most other mechanisms are!

Program details:  Diversity supplement scholars may be post-bacs, master’s degree holders, doctoral students, post-docs, or early career investigators who meet eligibility criteria outlined in PA-23-189 . A NIDA grantee-applicant must work closely with an eligible candidate to create a plan that will facilitate the scholar’s progression to the next career stage. The proposed research and training activities must be appropriate for the stage of the candidate, and the project must be within scope of the parent research award. Applications are administratively reviewed, that is, reviewed by NIH program staff.  NIDA PIs can apply through the general NIDA Diversity Supplement Program or through a specialized program, such as the one managed by the BRAIN Initiative .

What’s new: In fiscal year 2025 (which starts on October 1, 2024), NIDA’s general Diversity Supplement Program will have multiple receipt dates. While you can submit your application at any time, the cut-off dates for NIDA’s administrative review will be August 15th, October 15th, December 15th, February 15th, and April 15th.  The final receipt date to be considered for funding in the fiscal year (which ends September 30th) is April 15th. Another change to the program is that applications are limited to 6 pages regardless of the page limit for the “parent” grant mechanism , making application review equitable for all grant mechanisms. Please be certain to check your page limit!

For more information: To learn more, please see the Instructions to PI's and FAQ's , and reach out to Dr. Angela Holmes, NIDA’s Diversity Supplement Program Coordinator at ( [email protected] ).

Program Updates

A new nida funding opportunity hit the street consider applying for a “d-start”.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has published a new notice of funding opportunity (NOFO), PAS-24-242 , entitled “Data Science Track Award for Research Transition (D-START).”   Awards will support investigators to apply advanced data science techniques to address timely and challenging research questions related to substance use and substance use disorders (SUD). As defined by NIH, data science encompasses the development and use of quantitative and analytical methods to extract knowledge from large and complex data sets. Expanding expertise in data science, particularly in big data analytics and computational science, is crucial for advancing SUD research. The goal is to generate data-driven insights to inform the development and implementation of interventions for prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery across diverse populations.

While the R03 mechanism is used for this award, the D-START allows for projects with budgets of up to $100,000 per year in direct costs over 2 years.  NIDA plans to fund 6-7 projects per year during the 2025, 2026, and 2027 fiscal years, depending on annual institute appropriations and the receipt of meritorious applications.  D-START awardees are expected to use their project findings to pursue further grant applications, such as a subsequent R01, focusing on the intersection of substance use and data science. Cross-disciplinary collaborations are strongly encouraged, and NIDA welcomes applications from individuals of diverse backgrounds, including those historically underrepresented in STEM fields. Applicants should adhere to Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable (FAIR) principles and address ethical considerations in research involving human subjects. Read more about this opportunity .

Apply for a NIDA Travel Award

Call for applications! NIDA is providing travel awards for scholars interested in attending the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco on March 12 -15, 2025 in New Orleans, LA. The deadline to apply is December 1, 2024 at 11:59pm ET.

The NIDA Travel Award Program aims to defray the costs of in-person attendance at national scientific conferences. Travel award recipients will receive an award in the amount of $1500 for meeting transportation, lodging, and/or registration. Awardees are expected to attend a NIDA “meet-and-greet” at the conference.  See the NIDA Travel Award website for information about eligibility and how to apply.

Please contact Yohansa Fernández for any questions related to NIDA travel awards.

Career Development Spotlight: Dawn Bounds PhD, PMHNP-BC, FAAN

The NIDA ORTDD is excited to introduce Dr. Dawn Bounds to the research training community. Dr. Bounds is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Irvine within the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing. Her research interests include marginalized youth, adolescence, risk, resilience, commercial sexual exploitation, social media, mental health, integrative health, as well as wearable and biofeedback technology. She was a 2021 NIDA Diversity Scholars Network program participant and was recently awarded a 5-year R01 grant titled “ Teaching Youth & Families Self-Regulation Skills to Disrupt the Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences: Preventing Substance Use in Adversity-Impacted Youth .” Her research focuses the impact of the Garnering Resilience in Traumatized youth and families (GRIT) program on early initiation of alcohol and cannabis use among youth. Read about her below and what aspired her to become an addiction researcher.

Please share a little about yourself and your upbringing (if you're comfortable doing so), your educational background, and research focus.

I am the oldest of two daughters who were raised by a single mom. I am also a first-generation college student who was born and raised in Chicago. I spent all of my life there including my graduate education. I graduated with a BSN from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1999 and an MSN and PhD from Rush University in 2004 and 2015. Prior to becoming a researcher, I worked in the community as a psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner. My experiences as a clinician working with marginalized youth on the west side of Chicago informs my research interests to this day. My program of research focuses on youth risk and resilience. More specifically, I am interested in preventing substance use initiation and disorders in adversity impacted youth.

At what point in your life did you know you wanted to become a scientist? What drew you to the STEM field and particularly substance use/addiction research?

I never knew that I wanted to become a scientist because I had little exposure to research. It is one of the reasons I am currently so committed to exposing high school and undergraduate students to research through my lab. I used to teach in a master’s program that changed to a doctoral program and I was urged to get my doctorate to continue teaching. This prompted me to get my PhD.  During my program and working on a NIH funded study, I fell in love with research. 

I have to admit I used to be a little resistant to working in the field of substance use/addiction due to my firsthand knowledge of what it does to families. But what I realized is that trauma and adversity (my area of interest and expertise) is inextricably linked to substance use/addiction. To continue to excel in the field of trauma and adversity, meant including substance use/addiction research.

Were there any events or individuals who inspired you throughout your professional journey?

My mother is my greatest inspiration. She always taught me to defy all odds. My own life experiences taught me persistence. I have encountered several amazing mentors and colleague along the way who have inspired me, fought and advocated for me, and supported me on my professional journey. 

How did you learn about the NDSN Program? Please share about your experience as an NDSN scholar and major takeaways from participating in the program.

I tend to search out training programs and opportunities that support minoritized individuals like myself. These training programs have expanded my network and knowledge about programs like the NDSN. The NDSN provided a unique opportunity to receive a mock review of my grant which was so valuable. The biggest take away for me was to keep resubmitting my proposal. Doing so led to me finally getting funded this year.

What has been the most challenging obstacle you have had to face throughout your career journey to becoming an addiction researcher and what have you done to “push through”?

Not letting my career in academia become my sole identity has been most challenging. Academia and research can be consuming. Striking a balance between my work and the other aspects of my life has been an ongoing process. Understanding and prioritizing what’s most important to me has helped me push through with the help of my spirituality, supportive family and friends, and therapy. Building a support network that includes those who have thrived in academia is key.

Can you offer any advice to ESIs/scholars in earlier career stages who are navigating the NIH process for submitting grants and working towards the goal of being independently funded?

Persist! You belong in this space and your work is important to the field. Keep innovating, revising, and resubmitting those grants!

Is there anything else that you would like to share with the NIDA community about your inspiring journey?

I am truly grateful for being a part of the NIDA community. NIDA has supported my growth and development over the past 4 years. These initial investments through training have now led to a larger investment in my research. I’m excited to continue to collaborate with other NIDA scholars and prevent addiction and substance use disorders in adversity impacted youth.

Did You Know?  

Your opinion matters  check out the latest “rfi” on supporting postdoctoral scholars.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking feedback from the biomedical research community through a follow-up Request for Information (RFI) as part of an overarching goal to better support the postdoctoral scholar workforce. NIH began implementing recommendations earlier this year by increasing pay levels for Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards. A Request for Information has been issued to gather community input on additional proposed actions to accelerate the career transition of postdoc scholars into thriving biomedical research careers. 

Through the RFI, NIH is seeking additional specific suggestions, evidence-based strategies, and relevant data or related experiences that will help inform our potential strategies. Feedback will be accepted electronically until October 23, 2024 . Please feel free to respond and widely share the RFI with your networks!  NIH is particularly interested in receiving input from:

• Trainees (e.g., graduate students, postdocs),
• Early-stage investigators,
• Biomedical faculty,
• Training directors,
• Postdoctoral and graduate student office leaders,
• Biotech/biopharma industry scientists, and research education program advocates.

NIH encourages organizations (e.g., patient advocacy groups, professional societies) to submit a single response reflective of the views of the organization or its membership. Please direct all inquiries related to this RFI to [email protected] .

Closing the Ginther Gap: Annual Update on NIH's Progress

In late July, NIH’s annual update on efforts to address the “Ginther Gap” was published Dr. Marie Bernard, the Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce Diversity (COSWD), and Dr. Mike Lauer, the NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research.  The “Ginther Gap” refers to results from a 2011 study that found a 10 percentage point difference in grant application success rates between black and white applicants, favoring white applicants. This update is a continuation of their work to examine research project grant (RPG) and R01 funding rates by race and ethnicity, as NIH has developed numerous programs to address disparities over the past decade. Drs. Bernard and Lauer report that despite some progress, disparities in funding rates by race and ethnicity persist. However, they also reveal in a recent blog that funding rates for K awards increased between 2010 and 2022.  This is encouraging, as K awards often precede research project award funding.

Notable NIH initiatives to promote diversity in the scientific workforce include the Common Fund Diversity Program Consortium (DPC) and the Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) initiative. Along with the UNITE initiative, these programs aim to ensure that a diverse range of voices contribute to scientific innovation. The NIH remains committed to monitoring and evaluating progress towards achieving equity in funding, ensuring there are no barriers to participation. Read more about this update in the full blog post .

NIH UNITE Workshop on Structural Racism and Health Research

Have you ever wondered what is meant by “structural racism” or what structural racism has to do with health research and health outcomes?  On July 18th and 19th, the NIH UNITE Initiative leadership and members convened a virtual workshop to explore these and related topics. The workshop featured researchers, clinicians, and community partners with expertise in fields such as social and natural sciences, law and criminal justice, education, public policy, and social work—as well as biomedical, behavioral, and public health. Speakers provided insights into the origins and drivers of structural racism, methodological considerations in the measurement of structural racism, and interventions to improve health outcomes through strategies that reflect an awareness of the research on structural racism. A recording of the webinar is now available using these links: July 18 Videocast | July 19 Videocast .  See the workshop website for additional information about the event.  

A cross-divisional department spanning

Master of Health Science (MHS) in Environmental Health

Offered By: Department of Environmental Health and Engineering

Onsite or Online | Full-Time or Part-Time | 9 months – 2 years

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• Baltimore Community Outreach and Engagement Projects
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About the MHS in Environmental Health Program

Want to learn how the environment impacts our health? Consider a Master of Health Science in Environmental Health! Part of the #1 school of public health, this graduate degree program prepares students for careers in medicine, research, advocacy, policy and practice.

One of the School’s shortest degrees, the full-time MHS is a nine-month, coursework-based degree for individuals who want a comprehensive understanding of the association between our environment and health. Students will learn how environmental hazards (not only in air, water and food but also neighborhood and social hazards) affect human health at the individual, population and systems level.

A flexible part-time format is also available.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

MHS in Environmental Health Program Highlights

by peers in Environmental Health Sciences -  U.S. News & World Report

Customizable

Electives offered in 5 different areas

Online or Onsite

Online and part-time options available

Multidisciplinary

Take courses across engineering, business, and more

Areas of Interest

The Department offers courses in the following areas:

Courses in Food Systems, Water and Environmental Sustainability cover the factors that are driving current changes in the global environment and how they can lead to adverse effects on human health at individual and population levels. Through coursework and seminars, students will be exposed to a range of sustainability topics relating to food systems, water quality, use and re-use, the built environment and the multiple impacts of climate change. Research interests can include chemical and biological threats to food safety and water quality and approaches to effective intervention/prevention. This foundation can be used to support plans for subsequent doctoral (e.g. PhD, JD) level training or to pursue a career in government or the private sector. Students interested in this area may also complete the course requirements to receive the Certificate in Food, Environment and Public Health .

Courses in Health Security cover domestic and international health threats, including epidemics, natural disasters, technological accidents, and intentional attacks. Students examine major organizations and initiatives designed to prevent, detect, and respond to health security threats; assess the current status of health security preparedness; and evaluate strategies to enhance health security. These courses are designed for individuals who would like to begin careers in public health and healthcare preparedness, global health security, outbreak and epidemic management, disaster response, and related fields. A subset of courses are taught by faculty from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and informed by the Center’s two decades of scholarship and advocacy on health security policy.

Courses in Population Environmental Health are for students whose research interests involve the use of epidemiologic methods to investigate of the impact of environmental hazards on the health of communities and high-risk populations. Courses in this area provide a strong foundation in epidemiology and biostatistics and the pathways through which environmental chemical and biological exposures lead to detrimental health outcomes. These courses offer skills needed for the use of statistical approaches and introduce students to quantitative skills used in epidemiologic research. Research interests can range from the use of epidemiology to investigate associations between exposure and adverse health outcomes to its applications in risk assessment and environmental health regulatory processes. These courses can be used to support plans for subsequent PhD-level training, applying to medical school with master’s-level research experience or to pursue a career in government or the private sector. Students interested in this area may also complete the course requirements to receive the Certificate in Risk Sciences and Public Policy .

Pre-med courses provide the foundation for students planning to attend medical school. These courses provide a strong understanding of statistics and epidemiology. Elective courses in physiology, advanced toxicology, and environmental and occupational disease not only emphasize knowledge covered on the MCAT but they also differentiate graduates from the typical medical school applicant. Ideal candidates present with a strong foundation in the basic sciences and math. The American Association of Medical Colleges site now lists our MHS as a post-baccalaureate program.

Courses in Toxicology for Human Risk Assessment are designed to match the needs of students with research interests that extend from laboratory-based study of the toxicological and pathophysiological mechanisms of environmental chemical and biological agent exposures to the methods for applying toxicology data to human risk assessment and the development of regulatory policy. Students interested in these courses should have strong backgrounds in the basic sciences and be considering subsequent PhD-level training, applying to medical school with master’s-level research experience, or who may decide to pursue a career in government or private sector research positions.​ Students interested in this area may also complete the course requirements to receive the Certificate in Risk Sciences and Public Policy .

What Can You Do With a Graduate Degree In Environmental Health?

Individuals with this degree go on to work in environmental health policy, climate science, government and NGO settings, continuing graduate study, or medical school. Meet some of our graduates. 

Visit the Graduate Employment Outcomes DashboaRD

Alumni Spotlight: Mona Dai, MHS '17

Mona is a PhD student in environmental science & engineering at Harvard University, working on global pollutants including perfluorinated compounds (PFAS).

Jonathan Josephs-Spaulding, MHS '17

Jonathan is a computational microbiology doctoral student at a German University hospital.

Spotlight: Yinka Bode-George, MHS '17

Yinka N. Bode-George, MHS ’17, leads a national philanthropic nonprofit that transforms sustainability to maximize community impact and achieve environmental justice.

Curriculum for the MHS in Environmental Health

Browse an overview of the requirements for this master's program in the JHU  Academic Catalogue , explore all course offerings in the Bloomberg School  Course Directory , and find many more details in the program's Student Handbook.

Admissions Requirements

For the general admissions requirements see our How to Apply page.

Standardized Test Scores

Standardized test scores (GRE, MCAT) are  optional  for this program. The admissions committee will make no assumptions if a standardized test score is omitted from an application, but will require evidence of quantitative/analytical ability through other application components such as academic transcripts and/or supplemental questions.  Applications will be reviewed holistically based on all application components.

Tuition and Funding

Limited number of partial-tuition scholarships

Which degree is right for you?

We have a number of degrees designed to meet various professional and educational goals.

QUIZ: WHICH DEGREE IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

DURATION:   9 months full-time, onsite/online;  2 years, part-time, onsite/online

BEST FOR:   Applicants who wish to pursue a PhD or a career in the intersection of environmental and public health

BOTTOM LINE:   One-year program culminates in a short essay

GOOD TO KNOW:   Academic degree focusing on a specific area of public health, typically science-oriented

MHS PROGRAM PAGE

DURATION:  2 years, full-time, onsite

BEST FOR:  Applicants interested in hands-on experiences leading to research careers; good for students considering PhD programs

BOTTOM LINE:  The first year involves classes, while the second year involves full-time research with faculty (based on a proposal from year one), culminating in a thesis

GOOD TO KNOW:  Students get hands-on experience and conduct their own research

ScM PROGRAM PAGE

DURATION :  9 months (onsite) followed by a 7- to 12-month internship

BEST FOR:   Those seeking a career in the field of human health and environmental risk assessment

BOTTOM LINE:   Professional degree focused on fundamental concepts and testing approaches used in classic risk assessment processes

GOOD TO KNOW:   Only program of its kind in the U.S. Students completing the program can also earn the Certificate in Risk Sciences and Public Policy .

MS PROGRAM PAGE

DURATION:   1.5 years full-time (onsite)

BEST FOR:   Applicants with prior coursework in basic sciences who want a career in occupational health

BOTTOM LINE:   Designed to prepare students to pass the Certified Industrial Hygienist Examination

GOOD TO KNOW:   Complete an internship between years one and two to get work experience in industrial hygiene . This program is administered by the Whiting School of Engineering, but all classes are offered through the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

MSOEH PROGRAM PAGE

DURATION:   up to 5 years part-time (hybrid)

BEST FOR:   Professionals currently working in the field who want to advance their career in occupational health

GOOD TO KNOW:   Flexible format; complete independent project at your place of employment . This program is administered by the Whiting School of Engineering’s Engineering for Professionals program, but all classes are offered through the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Questions about the program? We're happy to help. [email protected]

What we do and don’t fund in discovery research

We support bold and creative discovery research that has the potential to improve human life, health and wellbeing.

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What we fund  

We don’t know where the new ideas that will transform research on health, life and wellbeing will come from, so what we fund in discovery research is broad.  

Research questions should generate knowledge that leads to a shift in understanding or delivers new insight into how human life and health work. We welcome proposals that may have a clinical or societal impact or have translational potential, but the focus should be on discovery research.    

We fund research into the:  

• fundamental processes that underpin biology, to understand more about how human life works
• complexities of human health and disease, including clinical and population-based approaches
• burden of disease and its determinants, where this brings new and transformational knowledge
• development of methodologies, conceptual frameworks, technologies, tools or techniques that could benefit health-related research
• needs, values and priorities of the people and communities affected by disease and health disparities
• social, ethical, cultural, political, economic and historical contexts of human health and disease.

Our Discovery Research funding is separate from the health challenge areas and so your research does not need to be connected to Mental Health, Climate and Health or Infectious Disease.

For an idea of the diversity of the research we currently fund, read about our recently funded projects.

We support research from a broad range of disciplines, including:

Science, technology, engineering, computation and mathematics Show

We support research that uses approaches and concepts from any scientific discipline, provided that the research will lead to a shift in understanding or deliver new knowledge and insights into life, health and wellbeing. Research that leads to the development of new methodologies, conceptual frameworks, tools or technologies should be of benefit to health-related research.

Clinical and allied health sciences Show

We support research based on humans (patients, healthy volunteers and populations) and designed to answer questions about health and disease. This includes the study of biological samples and personal data as well as the development of clinical phenotyping (biomarkers or technologies) to understand pathogenic mechanisms.

Experimental medicine Show

We support studies in humans where the aim is to identify mechanisms of physiology, pathophysiology or disease, including studies of existing treatments/prevention strategies to understand underlying mechanisms (biological or social) or validate a mechanistic hypothesis. This includes studies where new mechanistic insights may enable future development of novel therapeutic or diagnostic approaches. We also support proof-of-concept evidence of the validity and importance of new discoveries or treatments including the use of novel readouts or technologies for early evaluation of clinical efficacy or pathogenic mechanism.

Epidemiology, population and public health Show

We support all disciplines and study designs (observational sciences, trials or intervention designs) where the aim is to bring new understanding of the social and/or biological processes underpinning heath and disease, including understanding how and why interventions work.  We also support proof-of-concept studies that may lead to future large-scale interventions.

Arts, humanities, social sciences, and bioethics Show

We support research which seeks to generate knowledge about the needs, values and priorities of the people and communities affected by disease and health disparities. We also support research which aims to understand health and wellbeing in their historical, social, cultural, political, economic and ethical contexts.

Research can involve observational, experimental or theoretical approaches. It can be carried out in the laboratory, office, clinic or field. We particularly welcome applications that bring together different disciplines to tackle problems creatively and with new perspectives.

Find out more about our Funding Advisory Committees .

What we don't fund  

We will only fund proposals that are grounded in discovery research.  

Examples of things we will not fund include:

• Large clinical trials and population interventions where the main purpose is to develop, test or implement a drug, product or intervention. Intervention designs can be used if they bring understanding of biological and/or social mechanisms of health and disease , including understanding how or why interventions work, or to establish proof-of-concept.
• The development of compounds, tools, technologies or methodologies predominantly to be used for diagnosis, treatment or improving clinical care. The primary focus should be the benefit to health-related research although proposals may also have potential for clinical or translational impact.
• The study of animal diseases, including in food production animals, that are not transmissible to humans or not considered a model for human biology or disease. The study of zoonotic disease is only in remit where the aspects studied are relevant to humans (transmission or disease).
• Stand-alone resources (including databases) except as part of a proposal where generating a new resource or enriching an existing resource is required to answer specific research questions.

Who we fund  

We fund individuals at all career stages and teams of researchers.

Our schemes are open to lead applicants based in the UK, the Republic of Ireland and low- and middle-income countries (as defined by the OECD ) and co-applicants from the rest of the world if applying as part of a team.

We are keen to encourage applications from low- and middle-income countries. We have made changes to our funding schemes and remain open to international applications.

Our Discovery Research schemes

Find out more about our three schemes, including eligibility and what we offer. 

• Early-Career Awards
• Career Development Awards
• Discovery Awards

Related content  

• Our new funding will support bold and creative discovery research to improve health
• Discovery Research

Centre for Behaviour Change

• Consultancy
• 2025 Conference

Job vacancy Research Fellow in Behavioural Science: Digital Health Hub for Antimicrobial Resistance

28 August 2024

We are recruiting for a 'Research Fellow in Behavioural Science: EPSRC Digital Health Hub for Antimicrobial Resistance' - deadline to apply is 24 September 2024

We are seeking an experienced and enthusiastic Research Fellow to contribute to the behavioural science workstream, managed by Dr Fabiana Lorencatto, of the EPSRC-funded Digital Health Hub for Antimicrobial Resistance, which started in December 2023. This is a particularly exciting opportunity for researchers interested in applying behaviour change to health, and those with an interest in implementation science and health services research.

The Digital Health Hub for AMR brings together a critical mass of Co-Investigators working across traditional disciplines for AMR, including computer science, biomedical engineering, behavioural social science, environmental science, data visualisation, and clinical and public health research, from five universities, NHS, UK Health Security Agency, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, charities and industry partners.

The behavioural science workstream will provide cross-cutting behavioural science input into a series of grand challenge exemplar projects that aim to develop and pilot digital technologies to improve antimicrobial stewardship in different contexts. This workstream will therefore necessitate working across a number of different projects. The successful candidate will work with the team to identify opportunities for behavioural science input and application. The research will likely involve mixed-methods, applying behavioural science theories, and frameworks to explore the acceptability of digital technologies for antimicrobial stewardship and the individual, socio-cultural and environmental barriers and enablers to their uptake and implementation in the real world.

Further details about the project are available at:  https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FX031276%2F1

Please note  that

- the Starting salary offered will be in the range £42,099 – £45,521 including London Allowance; a pay award is pending.

- The post is hybrid with 2 days per week worked on campus at the CBC.

The deadline for applications is 24 September 2024.

Find out more and apply

Related News

Teens are spending nearly 5 hours daily on social media. Here are the mental health outcomes

Forty-one percent of teens with the highest social media use rate their overall mental health as poor or very poor

Vol. 55 No. 3 Print version: page 80

• Social Media and Internet

Percentage of teens with the highest social media use who rate their overall mental health as poor or very poor , compared with 23% of those with the lowest use. For example, 10% of the highest use group expressed suicidal intent or self-harm in the past 12 months compared with 5% of the lowest use group, and 17% of the highest users expressed poor body image compared with 6% of the lowest users.

Average number of hours a day that U.S. teens spend using seven popular social media apps, with YouTube , TikTok , and Instagram accounting for 87% of their social media time. Specifically, 37% of teens say they spend 5 or more hours a day, 14% spend 4 to less than 5 hours a day, 26% spend 2 to less than 4 hours a day, and 23% spend less than 2 hours a day on these three apps.

[ Related: Potential risks of content, features, and functions: The science of how social media affects youth ]

Percentage of the highest frequency social media users who report low parental monitoring and weak parental relationships who said they had poor or very poor mental health , compared with 25% of the highest frequency users who report high parental monitoring and strong parental relationships . Similarly, 22% of the highest users with poor parental relationships and monitoring expressed thoughts of suicide or self-harm compared with 2% of high users with strong parental relationships and monitoring.

Strong parental relationships and monitoring significantly cut the risk of mental health problems among teen social media users, even among those with significant screen time stats.

Rothwell, J. (October 27, 2023). Parenting mitigates social media-linked mental health issues . Gallup. Survey conducted between June 26–July 17, 2023, with responses by 6,643 parents living with children between ages 3 and 19, and 1,591 teens living with those parents. https://news.gallup.com/poll/513248/parenting-mitigates-social-media-linked-mental-health-issues.aspx .

Rothwell, J. (2023). How parenting and self-control mediate the link between social media use and mental health . https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/briefs/ifs-gallup-parentingsocialmediascreentime-october2023-1.pdf .

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Clinical Research Assistant – Grant Funded

Hi, {{firstName}} !

Whether you are looking for a new career opportunity or looking for care for yourself or a family member, you’ll find what you need at Scripps. We treat more than 700,000 patients annually through the dedication of 3,000 affiliated physicians and more than 15,000 employees among our five acute-care hospital campuses, hospice and home health care services, 30 outpatient centers and clinics, and hundreds of affiliated physician offices throughout the region.

Scripps Health Administrative Services supports our five hospitals and 19 outpatient facilities, which treat half a million patients annually through 2,600 affiliated physicians.

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Job Snapshot

Job description.

This is a per diem/casual, partial remote position located at La Jolla. The schedule would be 8 hour day shifts on weekdays. This is a grant funded role through 5/31/2025.

Join the Scripps Health team and work alongside passionate caregivers and provide patient-centered healthcare. Receive endless appreciation while you build a rewarding career with one of the most respected healthcare organizations nationwide. 

  Why join Scripps Health? 

  AWARD-WINNING WORKPLACE:  

·     Selected as one of the 100 Best Places to Work for 2024 by Fortune Magazine and the Great Place to Work Institute for the 16th time.  A remarkable achievement as only five healthcare organizations nationwide made the list, and Scripps is the sole healthcare provider in California to be recognized.   

·     Recognized by Newsweek as one of America’s Greatest Workplaces for Diversity in 2024.   

·     Nearly a quarter of our employees have been with Scripps Health for over 10 years.   

·     78 in 2023 PEOPLE Companies that Care.  

·     95 in Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work for 2023

Why join this team?

Scripps Health is committed to providing the best possible patient care, and research is a critical part of that mission. In addition to bringing the latest treatments to our patients, the knowledge gained from these research studies advances the quality of care for people around the world. The Clinical Research Services team is responsible for feasibility and research coordination for all clinical trials across all specialties. Our research team is growing and we are excited to be part of progressive clinical trials that will contribute and assist our patients in living their best lives.

This position is ideal for someone who is a fast learner, interested in research and experienced with patient care.  The responsibilities of the Research Assistant – Clinical include:

• Help coordinate multiple aspects of clinical trials and other human research ensuring compliance with research protocol and IRB requirements.
• Manage regulatory documents and data submission, assist with IRB submissions, responsible for keeping internal data tracking systems up to date.
• Provide superior service to principal investigators and research sponsors within scope of responsibilities.

In compliance with the California Pay Transparency Act, Scripps Health posts the pay range for all jobs. Please note that actual pay will be determined based on relevant experience and internal equity within the pay range. Please also note this range is applicable for employees who reside in California only. A geographical pay differential may be applied for remote employees who reside out of state. Scripps Health strives to ensure that our employees receive equal pay for equal work in line with our commitment to being an equal opportunity employer.

Requirements

Required Qualifications:

• 1 Year in health care setting OR Allied Health professional degree.
• Advanced written, oral and interpersonal communication skills.
• Strong prioritization, organizational, and problem solving skills.
• Strong motivator/communicator in a compact clinical team working with aggressive timelines.
• Strong computer skills with Microsoft Office software.
• BLS through American Heart Association.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Proficiency in medical terminology.
• Research experience.

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Provides direct patient care within the scope of his/her practice. Patient care includes assessment, planning and implementing a plan of care and evaluating patients' progress towards expected outcomes. The RN takes primary responsibility for the patients' care as delivered by the Care Team under his/her supervision.

Ensures nursing practice reflects established standards of care and practice and a culture that promotes patient safety. Under the general direction of the Patient Care Manager, shares leadership responsibilities for the nursing unit, including managing daily staffing plans.

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Assesses and improves the patient care process for the assigned population along the continuum of care, serving as an expert clinical resource for ensuring quality of care and customer satisfaction. Develops competencies for care line staff and may facilitate staff education.

Scripps Health is a non-profit health care delivery network dedicated to the community it calls home: San Diego, California. We are:

• Home to 5 hospitals, 30+ outpatient centers and hundreds of affiliated physician offices
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• At the forefront of clinical research and education, with three highly respected graduate medical education programs and one of the top teaching hospitals in the nation

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McLaren Health Care is a fully integrated health network committed to quality, evidence-based patient care with locations in Michigan and Indiana. The McLaren system includes 13 hospitals in Michigan, ambulatory surgery centers, imaging centers, a primary and specialty care physician network, commercial and Medicaid HMOs, home health, infusion and hospice providers, pharmacy services, a clinical laboratory network and a wholly owned medical malpractice insurance company. McLaren operates Michigan’s largest network of cancer centers and providers, anchored by the Karmanos Cancer Institute, one of only 53 National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centers in the U.S.

Clinical Research Coordinator II

🔍 michigan, detroit.

Provide study coordinator/data management/regulatory specialist support to the Clinical Trials Office (CTO). Manage independent assignment, providing excellent customer support and guidance in the clinical trials arena.

Responsibilities:

• Assure all study requirements are met and documented and meet both internal and external regulations in accordance with protocol guidelines.  
• Maintain logs, including tracker submissions and update the CTO Oncore database in a timely manner according to CTO SOPs.  
• Design systems for coordinating, compiling and submission of data; design workflow processes and participate in quality assurance measures; coordinate site visits.  
• Manage all patient and/or protocol data as assigned and respond to queries in a timely fashion.  
• Schedule and participate in monitoring visits and participate in multidisciplinary team program meetings as required.

·           Bachelor’s degree required or equivalent combination of education and experience.

·           Medical and/or science experience/education preferred.

·           Clinical research certification preferred.

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Research Data Assistant - 131883

Job description, #131883 research data assistant.

UCSD Layoff from Career Appointment : Apply by 9/04/2024 for consideration with preference for rehire. All layoff applicants should contact their Employment Advisor.

Special Selection Applicants : Apply by 9/13/2024. Eligible Special Selection clients should contact their Disability Counselor for assistance.

DESCRIPTION

The Department of Pediatrics is one of the largest departments within the School of Medicine with approximately 171 Faculty, 50 postdoctoral fellows (both MDs and PhDs) along with over 300 support staff (not including hospital staff). In addition, the Department has 57 clinical residents and fellows distributed across the Divisions. The missions of research, education and patient care are intertwined, and are integral to the goals of the department.

The Department has undergone significant growth in recent years with a consolidated budget of approximately $106 million including sponsored projects expenditures of approximately $54 million and clinical revenue of over $ 52 million. This expansion of the Department’s research and clinical portfolio is expected to continue in the next few years.

The Department’s 16 divisions include Academic General Pediatrics, Child Development & Community Health; Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology; Cardiology; Environmental Science and Health; Emergency Medicine; Endocrinology; Gastroenterology; Genetics; Genome Information Sciences; Hospital Medicine; Host-Microbe Systems and Therapeutics; Infectious Diseases; Neonatology; Nephrology; and Respiratory Medicine.

In 2001, physicians and leadership of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Rady Children's, and Children's Specialists of San Diego (CSSD) unified pediatric patient care, research, education and community service programs, creating a university-affiliated children's health system to serve the region. Over the past two decades, an extensive list of joint programs has developed, with many physicians and researchers playing a role at both institutions.

This affiliation has consolidated the clinical, teaching, research and public service programs of the UCSD School of Medicine's Department of Pediatrics with San Diego's only health care system dedicated to the health and well-being of children. In 2009, this partnership was furthered by the creation of Rady Children’s Specialists of San Diego, a Medical Foundation, and is now recognized as having global leaders in research, technology, translational medicine, education and clinical excellence.

The Division of Environmental Science & Health is involved in four major areas: 1) providing clinical services to patients with birth defects and developmental disabilities, 2) providing public health services in counseling patients, providers and education to the public about pregnancy and lactation exposures and their impact on child development and health, 3) a teaching program that includes undergraduate students, graduate students in epidemiology, medical students, and post -doctoral students, pediatrics, epidemiology, health behavior, global health, pharmacy, and other specialties; and 4) conducting clinical research to better understand the causes, prevention and treatment of birth defects and developmental disabilities. Research programs and projects within the Division involve federal, state and industry sponsored grants and contracts totaling over $60 million. These encompass national and international studies that require complex interrelated infrastructure and shared resources both within the Division and with collaborators and subcontractors outside the Division.

This position works on the MotherToBaby Pregnancy Studies focused on research identifying safety and risk of exposures to chronic conditions, medications, vaccinations, and other types of exposures on pregnancy outcome. The position requires tact and strict confidentiality in the handling of sensitive information, as well as independent judgment and organizational skills to prioritize demands. Under the direction of the manager, the Research Data Assistant is responsible for various administrative and data quality assessment tasks related to study administration. Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, tracking medical record release form and medical record receipt status, data entry, invoice processing, procedure auditing, communicating with participants and health-care professionals, and other general administrative duties.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

Demonstrated organizational and multi-tasking skills, with the ability to work efficiently, follow direction, document accurately, and pay close attention to detail.

Ability to work independently and communicate effectively, in person, over the telephone, and through video meetings.

Demonstrated professionalism and interpersonal skills in working with staff and outside study personnel at various levels of responsibility.

Ability to maintain confidentiality and adhere to all requirements and IRB guidelines in regards to PIH/PII.

Ability to process, organize, photocopy, scan, and file a large volume of medical records and medical record release forms.

Demonstrate strong interpersonal skills, including tact, diplomacy, and flexibility. Clearly communicate ideas and issues verbally and in writing. Interact effectively with individuals at all levels within the University and externally to promote positive working relationships and to achieve the organization's goals and objectives.

Ability to understand and apply University, Campus and Federal policies and regulations.

Possess excellent organizational skills with the ability to be flexible, and handle multiple tasks simultaneously. Ability to prioritize workload to meet shifting deadlines and changing priorities. Ability to remain focused and organized while experiencing interruptions.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

Demonstrated experience in reviewing medical records for completeness. Experience reviewing data-entry for accuracy in a setting in which multiple users are accessing the database.

Knowledge of scientific and medical terminology. Demonstrated experience in working with medical terminology, pharmaceutical and birth defect terminology, and or theoretical knowledge of biology, chemistry, and/or embryology.

Previous experience requesting medical records in a healthcare setting.

SPECIAL CONDITIONS

Employment is subject to a criminal background check.

Job offer is contingent upon satisfactory clearance based on Background Check results.

Pay Transparency Act

Annual Full Pay Range: $33,900 - $72,996 (will be prorated if the appointment percentage is less than 100%)

Hourly Equivalent: $16.24 - $34.96

Factors in determining the appropriate compensation for a role include experience, skills, knowledge, abilities, education, licensure and certifications, and other business and organizational needs. The Hiring Pay Scale referenced in the job posting is the budgeted salary or hourly range that the University reasonably expects to pay for this position. The Annual Full Pay Range may be broader than what the University anticipates to pay for this position, based on internal equity, budget, and collective bargaining agreements (when applicable).

If employed by the University of California, you will be required to comply with our Policy on Vaccination Programs, which may be amended or revised from time to time. Federal, state, or local public health directives may impose additional requirements. If applicable, life-support certifications (BLS, NRP, ACLS, etc.) must include hands-on practice and in-person skills assessment; online-only certification is not acceptable.

UC San Diego Health Sciences is comprised of our School of Medicine, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, The Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, and our Student Health and Well-Being Department. We have long been at the forefront of translational - or "bench-to-bedside" - research, transforming patient care through discovery and innovation leading to new drugs and technologies. Translational research is carried out every day in the hundreds of clinical trials of promising new therapies offered through UC San Diego Health, and in the drive of our researchers and clinician-scientists who are committed to having a significant impact on patient care. We invite you to join our team!

Applications/Resumes are accepted for current job openings only. For full consideration on any job, applications must be received prior to the initial closing date. If a job has an extended deadline, applications/resumes will be considered during the extension period; however, a job may be filled before the extended date is reached.

To foster the best possible working and learning environment, UC San Diego strives to cultivate a rich and diverse environment, inclusive and supportive of all students, faculty, staff and visitors. For more information, please visit UC San Diego Principles of Community .

UC San Diego is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age or protected veteran status.

For the University of California’s Affirmative Action Policy please visit: https://policy.ucop.edu/doc/4010393/PPSM-20 For the University of California’s Anti-Discrimination Policy, please visit: https://policy.ucop.edu/doc/1001004/Anti-Discrimination

UC San Diego is a smoke and tobacco free environment. Please visit smokefree.ucsd.edu for more information.

UC San Diego Health maintains a marijuana and drug free environment. Employees may be subject to drug screening.

Application Instructions

Please click on the link below to apply for this position. A new window will open and direct you to apply at our corporate careers page. We look forward to hearing from you!

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Posted : 8/29/2024

Job Reference # : 131883

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• Annalynn Galvin , Post-doctoral Fellow/Research Assistant Professor at the Cizik School of Nursing, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), Houston, TX.
• Ashvita Garg, Post-doctoral Research Fellowship with Hollings Cancer Center, a National Cancer Institute-Designated Cancer Center at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC).
• Cassidy LoParco, Post-doctoral Research Fellowship in substance use prevention and harm reduction in the Milken Institute College of Public Health at The George Washington University.
• Jonathan Moore, Post-doctoral Fellow Postdoctoral Fellow with the WWAMI Medical Education Program, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID.
• Noah Peeri , Post-doctoral Fellow in Cancer Epidemiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY.
• Zhengqi Tan , Scientist, Pumas-AI, Inc. Model Informed Drug Development.

This page was last modified on October 18, 2023

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• Opportunities

Director Public Health Evaluation

Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) is a USA based Organization with public health programs around the World. It creates a future of hope for children and families worldwide by eradicating pediatric AIDS, providing care and treatment for people with HIV and AIDS, and accelerating the discovery of new treatments for other serious and life- threatening pediatric illnesses. EGPAF`s work is funded through private donations, PEPFAR via the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Centre for Disease Control & Prevention CDC), Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) etc.

POSITION TITLE: Director Public Health Evaluation (*1)

JOB SUMMARY

Strategic Planning and Technical Leadership

• Design, lead, manage and ensure technical quality of research and evaluation portfolio and staff capacity development within EGPAF Lesotho.
• Lead and oversee the EGPAF/Lesotho clinical, implementation, operations, and program effectiveness research in collaboration with Technical and Strategic Information teams.
• Lead and/or oversee all aspects of the research and evaluation studies, from idea conception, development of protocols and data collection instruments, personnel training, study implementation, data management/analysis to manuscript writing.
• Develops and oversees budgets, policies, and procedures to guide research and evaluations within EGPAF Lesotho

Quality Assurance

• Serves as Principal Investigator across a range of HIV, MNCH, TB, PHC, global health security ad other emerging infectious disease topics
• Collaborates with EGPAF global research team and teams across the Foundation, to leverage global expertise, share experience and facilitate multi-country research activities
• Liaises with the EGPAF global regulatory officer to ensure all human subjects’ research protections are in place and all protocols undergo appropriate sponsor, U.S. and Lesotho IRB review and approval.
• Identify and evaluate interventions to address key programmatic challenges using strong scientific methodology to inform the program, MOH, and the broader HIV field

Capacity Building

• Strengthens local partners’ staff, national health institutions and the MOH to carry out high quality research
• Develops staff capacity within EGPAF Lesotho for high-quality research and evaluation.

Collaboration and Partnership

• Develops and oversees partnerships that expand EGPAF’s ability to conduct and disseminate research of importance to the Foundation and the country
• Work with New Business and global research teams to generate research funding through proposal development and submissions to funding agencies

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

MD, PhD or similar advanced degree in Epidemiology, Maternal and Child Health, Public Health or Global health related sciences

• Minimum of 10 years of proven experience in health research and evaluation in developing countries, including serving as a study Principal Investigator, leading study design, protocol development, data collection, data analysis, and writing/contributing to scientific publications
• Minimum 8 years’ experience in administration of research projects including managing research teams and donor management
• Experience in maternal, child health and HIV/AIDS research preferred
• Experience in developing research protocols for IRB review and managing IRB correspondence and requirements nationally and internationally
• Extensive knowledge of and demonstrated experience in research methodologies
• Experience in providing study monitoring and oversight for implementation, including regulatory and protocol compliance and data quality assurance

Bonus points:

• Well published in peer reviewed journals
• Knowledge and understanding of HIV services, PMTCT, MCH, pediatric and adult HIV care and treatment
• Knowledge of protection of human subjects in research and ethics regulations to ensure compliance with all local and international requirements
• Proficiency in the use of databases such as Microsoft Access, EpiInfo and analytical software, such as STATA, SPSS, R is an advantage

Director Public Health Evaluation (DPHE) https://phe.tbe.taleo.net/phe02/ats/careers/v2/viewRequisition?org=PEDAIDS&cws=41&rid=3232 We regret that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted