Barriers to health for correctional staff

The Health Improvement Through Employee Control (HITEC) study is an intervention study developed at the Center for Promoting Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW), a NIOSH-funded WorkLife Center. The HITEC study involves the integration of workplace health promotion with occupational health and safety. The particular emphasis is on ergonomics and musculoskeletal disease. The HITEC study aims to compare two approaches: 1) a professionally designed “best practices” and 2) an employee sponsored participatory program. Employees at two correctional institutions and two manufacturing facilities in the same New England State constitute the study populations. This presentation is on the correctional institutions, only.

Correction officers are an under studied population. Correction officers begin their careers in better physical condition than the population in general and, like firefighters, have strict inception criteria. However, during the average 20 years of employment required for full pension rights, officer health decreases dramatically, and often falls below national norms. This presentation presents qualitative data from the HITEC study in regards to health and its barriers among correction staff. It consists of ten interviews of managers and union leaders. The data was analyzed quantitatively using Atlas TI software. Several issues recurred, independent of the interview source. These issues and their impact on the health of the correction staff will be presented. We will also consider the use of qualitative data in this type of population, when used alongside more traditional surveys and checklists.