Systems Epidemiology of Working Life
Advancing an Emerging Explanatory Science for Population Health
Working life occupies a central place in adult life and is an important domain of population health. It shapes exposures, resources, protections, opportunities, and constraints whose consequences can accumulate across working lives and extend across the lifecourse.
Yet epidemiology has only partially explained how the organisation of working life generates and patterns these conditions, and how they contribute to differences in population health and Human Functioning over time.
Systems Epidemiology of Working Life
Systems Epidemiology of Working Life (SEWL) investigates how societal organisation, operating through Labour Systems, shapes the generation and patterning of Working-Life Exposure Systems. It examines how these exposure systems may contribute, through biological and other pathways, to population health and trajectories of Human Functioning across the lifecourse.
SEWL approaches working life not simply as a setting in which occupational exposures occur, but as a complex population-health system through which exposures, resources, protections, opportunities, and constraints are generated, patterned, and distributed across working lives and populations.
The Scientific Pathway
The central explanatory pathway of SEWL connects the organisation of working life with its cumulative consequences for populations over time. Its scientific proposition is that Labour Systems generate and pattern Working-Life Exposure Systems the cumulative histories of which may contribute through Biological Embodiment and other pathways to population health and trajectories of Human Functioning across the lifecourse.
The pathway is directional but dynamic rather than strictly linear. Prior health and functioning, selection and transitions across working life, changing contextual conditions, and feedback between functioning and subsequent working conditions may alter exposure trajectories over time.
Figure 1 presents a simplified overview of the principal constructs and relationships within this explanatory architecture.
Figure 1
Current Scientific Priorities
Current scientific priorities reflect the questions, empirical challenges, and transformations defining the next phase of SEWL research.
Figure 2 presents a simplified overview of the principal areas of investigation.
Figure 2
Engage with SEWL
SEWL is advancing through empirical investigation, critical scientific inquiry, interdisciplinary exchange, and international collaboration.