About
U-POWER holds seminars 1-2 times monthly that are accessible virtually via Zoom to build relationships among U-POWER investigators, partners, and stakeholders, engage new people with U-POWER activities, provide professional development related to team science, transdisciplinary research, community-based participatory research, and grant writing and reviewing and exchange new knowledge related to TWH and work equity. To suggest a seminar topic, please leave a note in our U-POWER suggestion box or email camie.schaefer@utah.edu.
A variety of activities are included in the seminar series to appeal to individuals across our community of practice, including journal clubs, oral presentations, peer review of work under development, and workshops. To help us track attendance and to improve our Seminar Series, we request that all attendees register for free prior to the event.
Upcoming
February 2024: Incivility at Work: Introducing a New Toolkit. 2/23 at 12:00 PM MST. Join us for a brown bag lunch and learn dedicated to our new toolkit, A Manager's Guide to Incivility. Call it rudeness, disrespect, or any number of things, but incivility at work is an age-old problem. Incivility can take the shape of many different forms that range from outright unpleasantness (shouting, demeaning remarks) to non-engagement (refusing to respond to emails, not inviting someone to meetings). What's more, with rising demands and workloads, a more diverse workforce, and new modes of communication, incivility may even be on the rise. A number of tools, including quizzes, interventions, and strategies, have been developed to try to counter this. However, many of these available tools are targeted to individual employees (how to handle incivility individually or training in microaggressions) or to organizational leadership. Join U-POWER for the official launch of this toolkit, to learn more about incivility, and what some strategies are that can combat it. Register here for meeting information.
Past
January 2024: Utah Health Workers United Panel. 1/25 @ 4:00 PM. One of the newest additions to labor organization scene in Utah is Utah Health Workers United (UHWU), a union for frontline healthcare workers at University of Utah Health. At this U-POWER Seminar Series, members of UHWU’s central committee will discuss the process of forming a union, what the tipping point was that led to them organizing, how and why they hope the community will support them, and why UHWU argues that “advocating for healthcare workers is advocating for patients.” UHWU members who will present at the panel are Caleb Wilcox, RN, who works is the Burn Trauma ICU; Garrett Schwanke, BSN, RN, a current DNP student; Jessica Stauffer, RN, who works in Acute Care, and Talmage Nelson, AEMT. Watch on YouTube here.
December 2023: Education & Decent Work Panel Discussion. Does education guarantee decent work? How does our educational system encourage—or exclude—people from progressing in their careers? What can we do to think differently about education, worth, and work? The December Seminar Series Education & Decent Work Panel Discussion will be held on December 14, 2023 at 4:00 pm MST. Panelists include Dr. Jason Taylor (Assistant Professor and Director of the Collaborative for Higher Education Research and Policy [CHERP] at the University of Utah), Jay Blain (Policy and Research Director of the Utah Education Association), Alexander Hyres (Assistant Professor in the History of US Education), and Kamaile Tripp (Community health worker and CHW coordinator at the University of Utah). Watch on YouTube here.
November 2023: Transit Discussion Panel. What is the relationship between transit access and work? What research needs to be done to advance transit use? How does transit relate to community health, and how does that change when you bring work into the equation? Join U-POWER for a special Seminar Series on November 16th (4:00 PM MST) for a panel discussion that will explore these questions. Panel speakers include Dr. Reid Ewing (University of Utah), Darin Mano (Salt Lake City Council Member), Mary DeLaMare-Schaefer (Regional General Manager at UTA), and Cecilee Price-Huish (advocate, attorney, and graduate student at the University of Utah). Each of these panel members brings different expertise and experience to this discussion, and we’re thrilled to present this to U-POWER’s community of practice. Watch on YouTube here.
October 2023: What’s Work Got to Do With It? Education Access and Decent Work. From a young age, we’re often told that education is a path to a better career and success in life. But is that always the case? While postsecondary education in the United States promises better lifelong earnings as well as noneconomic benefits, researchers and advocates are calling for a closer examination of the costs and benefits of education. Others are calling for alternative educational paths, such as skills-based training or apprenticeship. Join U-POWER as we discuss how education affects job access and experience, how education does (and doesn’t) remedy societal inequality, and how we might be able to leverage education in our journey towards work equity.
September 2023: What’s Work Got to Do With It? Transit Access and Decent Work. Many job advertisements read “must have access to reliable transportation,” but that can be easier said than done, particularly for workers living in rural areas. Join U-POWER as we discuss the ways that people get to work and how access to transit can shape job choices. We’ll also look at how different transportation options are linked to economic outcomes, inequities in access to transportation, and ways to help people physically arrive at work. Finally, we’ll examine transportation-related inequities in Utah and potential changes that have been proposed as a way to get people to work in a safer, healthier, and more environmentally friendly fashion.
August 2023: Precarious Employment and Health in the United States. Understanding the cause of health disparities, including weight-related illnesses, is key to achieving health equity. Join U-POWER on August 24 at 4:00 PM (MST) for a talk from Dr. Vanessa Oddo as she discusses findings from her study funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), which investigated precarious employment as a determinate of overweight/obesity and cardiovascular disease. Dr. Oddo’s talk will focus on findings from her NIMHD-funded study, including changes in precarious employment over time and the association between precarious employment and obesity in the U.S. Additionally, she will highlight the effect of precarious employment on food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her presentation will conclude by briefly discussing ongoing research related to precarious employment and stress.
June 2023: Pilot Projects towards Total Worker Health®. What do farmworkers in Salt Lake City experience, and how do food systems affect their lives, work, and the crops and animals that sustain all of us? What effect did union membership have on the well-being of workers during the COVID-19 pandemic? Can unions help reduce labor market disparities in wages, security, paid leave, and disability among women and workers of color? Labor market policies like the minimum wage, assistance programs, and collective bargaining help support worker power. But access to such policies is uneven across the U.S. How do these indicators of power affect inequalities in health outcomes? Our 2023 Pilot Project Awardees plan to explore these questions in the upcoming year. Join U-POWER on June 22 for an inside look at these projects as researchers provide overviews of their projects, explain why they chose to ask these questions in support of healthy and equitable work, and what changes they hope to see after successful completion of their research.
May 2023: Power Dynamics at Work. Corner offices, bonuses, assistants: most of us readily recognize these signs of leaders who hold power at work. But power dynamics at work are more complex than identifying who is in charge of a workplace’s operations. Employers hold power over workers, which is reinforced by policies and regulations. Power shapes who does what kind of work and the protections and benefits offered by a job. Workers with greater power have greater influence over their working conditions, which allows them to arrange their job tasks and work situations to maximize their well-being and productivity. Other workers are disempowered by strategies such stringent time monitoring, removing access to personal items at work, and even banning co-worker communication. Access to power is shaped by societal discrimination, interpersonal relationships, labor market dynamics, and worker protections. Join U-POWER’s Seminar Series on May 18th as we examine different manifestations of power, how power is preserved or removed, and how workers can gain power both within a single workplace and within the entire landscape of work.
April 2023: Influencing Employers to Implement Health and Safety Programs: Where Research and Experience Meet. How can we bridge between what employers want and what workers need in a balance of productivity, profit, health, and safety? This question is at the heart of our collective efforts to work towards healthy and equitable work. Some argue that more rigorous regulations are necessary to create healthy work, while others look to the business community to exert pressure on fellow employers. And what impact does research on evidence-based best practices have on the creation of health and safety programs? Join us for a U-POWER workshop on April 6 for an overview of two studies, one from the U.S. and one from Sweden, that investigate what influences business owners and managers to implement health and safety programs. We’ll talk about their findings, discuss our experiences as workers and stakeholders in healthy work, and brainstorm concrete strategies to get employers the information they need to encourage health and sustainability in their organizations. You’ll leave with a one-page takeaway to share with others in your work and elsewhere.
March 2023: Precarious Employment, Well-being, and Food Labor: A Qualitative Study Among New York City Food Chain Workers. In 2020, many workers precariously employed in so-called “low-skill” care-related occupations were suddenly dubbed essential workers. But even as society lauded these workers, wages and working conditions continued to be poor. Food workers (primarily in the services and manufacturing industries) were one of the sectors located at the center of this, finding themselves simultaneously “essential” but precariously employed, their work suddenly valued but continuously called “low-skilled.” Join U-POWER on March 16 for a presentation from doctoral researcher Emma Vignola, who conducted in-depth interviews with New York City food workers to explore how food workers experience precarious work, the ways it influences their health and well-being, and how all this intersects with workers’ perceptions of the value of their labor. From there, we’ll discuss how a focus on the social function of work might help us collectively challenge the precarious employment that contributes to health inequities in our society.
February 2023: Mental Health and the Workplace. Burnout, anxiety, depression. High-stress jobs. Turnover and loss of productivity. These phrases are seen and heard again and again in the news, at HR meetings, and in discussions about work. But is that extent of what “mental health in the workplace” means? This question gives rise to others, like the responsibility that employers have for their employees’ mental health, what a mentally supportive workplace looks like, and what interventions we should consider as we aim to make work a healthier place to be. Join U-POWER for a discussion of mental health in the workplace as we examine the Surgeon General’s new framework for workplace mental health and well-being, as well as some of the interventions that workplaces have deployed. We’ll follow this with a series of discussion questions focused on how and why employers care about mental health, how “success” in mental health interventions is treated and framed, and what has changed in the nature of work today to make mental health and well-being such a central focus.
January 2023: Work as a Social Determinant of Health. Join us on January 19th at 4:00 pm MST as we explore both how work functions as a determinant of health and what researchers, health practitioners, and policymakers can do about it. While most definitions of the social determinants of health don't explicitly include work, work influences health through the conditions of employment (full-time, part-time, precarious), working conditions (physical, biological, and psychosocial hazards) as well as where a person fits within a society in terms of status and connectedness. However, work as a measure of health and inequality primarily remains in the domain of occupational health researchers rather than public health as a whole. What can we do to change that?
December 2022: Occupational Segregation in America. We closed 2022's Seminar Series on December 8 (4:00 pm MST) with a discussion of occupational segregation. Occupational segregation helps us understand why most aircraft pilots are men and most flight attendants are women, and why nearly one-third of all home health providers in the United States are Black women. Occupational segregation is a concept that explains how, within occupations, demographic groups tend to be over- and underrepresented in startling ways. We discussed the historical and cultural roots of occupational segregation, how educational attainment does and does not change occupational segregation, and some of the consequences on worker well-being and the health and safety of work.
November 2022: Sexism, Structures, and Systems at Work (Pt II). On November 17 at 4:00 pm MST, we took a closer look at how sexism affects both men and women in the workplace. Our discussion focused on Factors affecting workforce participation and healthy worker biases in U.S. women and men by Johnson et al. (2017) and explored the cultural and societal forces that keep women out of the workplace and affect men's health.
October 2022: Sexism, Structures, and Systems at Work (Pt I). October and November's Seminar Series was a two-part exploration of health inequity, worker health, and gender. On October 27 at 4:00 pm MST, we hosted an overview and discussion of Patricia Homan's article Structural Sexism and Health in the United States: A New Perspective on Health Inequality and the Gender System. Homan's article explores how sexism exists at multiple levels within society, the links between sexism and health disparities, and how we can apply this perspective to future research and advocacy.
September 2022: Public and Occupational Health. Our September Seminar Series focused on The Role of Labor Unions in Creating Working Conditions that Promote Public Health by Hagedorn et al. (2016) and an exploration of how researchers and practitioners both can promote public health through worker advocacy and collective bargaining. We also discussed the state of unionization in America and Utah today, contemporary unionization movements at companies such as Apple, Starbucks, and Google, and what steps we can all take to promote worker, family, and community health.
August 2022: Solutions for a Changing World: Reduction of Hazardous Exposures in Small Businesses through a Community Health Worker Intervention. Join us on August 18 at 4:00 pm MST for a presentation from Dr. Paloma Beamer on her work with community health workers (promotoras) to help relieve the burden of occupational disease among small businesses.
June 2022: Vagueness, Power, and Public Health.We tend to use the word ‘vulnerable’ to mean that someone can be easily harmed and should be protected. In public health, vulnerable refers to populations who are “at a greater risk for poor health status and healthcare access, experience significant disparities in life expectancy, access to and use of healthcare services, morbidity, and mortality.” Join us on June 23 at 4:00 pm MST for discussion of Katz et al.’s paper Vagueness, power, and public health: use of ‘vulnerable’ in public health literature. We will also discuss how different populations have been characterized as vulnerable, the impact that naming has on research and care, and what next steps we should take.