Safety & Health Improvement: Enhancing Law Enforcement Departments
Condition: Physical Activity; Nutrition; Health Promotion; Stress, Psychological; Cardiovascular Diseases; Cancer
MeSH terms: Cardiovascular Diseases; Stress, Psychological
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      Researchers from Oregon Health & Science University have developed a science-based,
      team-centered, scripted peer-taught program for fire fighters improving diet and exercise
      behavior while reducing injury rates and costs. Those investigators are partnering with local
      law enforcement agencies in Oregon and SW Washington to adapt, apply and assess this
      work-based program among a new high risk group to improve the health and safety of law
      enforcement officers (LEOs). Fire fighters' work structure is a natural fit for a
      team-centered format, and teammates' social support appeared to partially mediate the
      intervention's positive outcomes. Although conducive to team formation, LEOs' work lacks the
      established team structure of fire fighters. This proposal will apply the team-centered
      intervention to LEOs and in the process, learn more about teams as vehicles of health
      behavior change, and their relationship with outcomes and other potential mediating variables
      in a multilevel ecological analytic framework.
    

Detailed description: 
      Following a 3 month pilot study with four teams, we will enroll 14 precincts and 80 teams
      (approximately 470 participants) of LEO work groups for a prospective, clustered randomized
      2-year assessment of the intervention (40 intervention and 40 testing-only, control-condition
      teams). Participants will be evaluated at baseline, 12, and 24. Primary study aims are; 1)
      Implement a randomized controlled efficacy trial of the SHIELD intervention, a peer-led,
      team-based occupational wellness program, and assess its behavioral and occupational
      outcomes, 2) Determine relations among variables in the chain from exposure of LEO subjects
      to specific intervention components to changes in mediating variables to behavior changes and
      occupational outcomes, and 3) Perform a cost analysis to determine the economic benefit of
      this LEO worksite health promotion program.

      The intervention involves a scripted peer-taught interactive curriculum, which is delivered
      as twelve, one-hour weekly sessions incorporated into a team's usual work time activities,
      with four follow-up booster sessions after twelve months. The curriculum is designed to build
      understanding, healthy decision making skills and engender the social support of teammates;
      its content and scope reflects the core lifestyles activities used with fire fighters, along
      with adaptations for the needs of LEOs in domains of the team-building, family support and
      psychological health.

      Participant assessments include established survey instruments, physiological measures and
      selected laboratory parameters of outcomes and potential mediating variables at the
      individual, interpersonal and organizational levels. Intervention delivery and fidelity will
      be assessed. Multilevel and latent growth modeling and mediation analyses will be used to
      assess outcomes and the relationships among variables. At proposal completion there will be
      an evidenced-based, exportable occupational safety and health program for LEOs. Its critical
      components will be defined, and its benefits clearly determined.
    

Intervention name(s): Behavioral: Team-based intervention
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): The intervention involves a scripted peer-taught interactive curriculum, which is delivered as twelve, one-hour weekly sessions incorporated into a team's usual work time activities, with four follow-up booster sessions after twelve months.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Prevention