Safety & Health Improvement: Enhancing Law Enforcement Departments

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.