Occupational Health Disparities among Racial and Ethnic Minorities: Lessons from Diverse Research Frameworks

Abstract

The current paper aims to advance research on occupational health disparities among racial and ethnic minorities. We review the historical context and development of the field of occupational health disparities, and review a diverse set of national research frameworks. Our work is based on the Diversified Portfolio Model (DPM) of adaptability (Chandra and Leong 2016) which maintains that diversification promotes greater adaptability. Since diversification bestows adaptive advantages in multiple arenas of human endeavor, we proposed that an analysis of diverse theoretical models for studying occupational health disparities would also benefit the field of Occupational Health Science. The theoretical frameworks reviewed include: (a) The National Institute of Aging's (NIA) health disparities framework, (b) An Epidemiological Framework, (c) The Transformation for Health Framework, and (d) The Cultural Adaptations Framework. We summarize lessons and highlight the need for incorporating change perspectives, prevention-oriented approaches, and mixed-methods approaches to address occupational health disparities.Keywords Occupational health disparities . Racial and ethnic minorities . Diversified Portfolio Model Racial and ethnic minority groups have a disproportionate share of disease, disability, and premature death compared to the general population (Leong et al. 2017). Such disparate impact has been observed across different fields ranging from health to education and various explanations for these effects have been posited (

Program evaluation: The bottom line in organizational health.

“…Moreover, involvement of stakeholders is particularly critical to better understand and mitigate the cultural and racial framing embedded in the organizations, programs, and theories that constitute the working arena of evaluation (Gill et al, 2016;House, 2017). Evaluation is not a value-free exercise, and attention to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion as they affect the development, execution, and evaluation of programs and policies in OHP is an ethical imperative (Chatterjee & Leong, 2020;Sinclair et al, 2020).…”