ORIGINS & LEADERSHIP AT A GLANCE
Systems Epidemiology of Working Life (SEWL) was introduced by Yorghos Apostolopoulos and has emerged from nearly three decades of research spanning occupational and environmental health, epidemiology, population health, social science, and complex systems.
Its scientific development has progressed through interconnected lines of inquiry involving complex occupational and population-health problems, complex systems approaches, the Working-Life-Exposome, Epidemiology of Working Life, Exposure-System Science, Work-Structured Ageing, and Functional Sustainability. These developments progressively converged in SEWL.
Based in Athens following a long U.S. academic career, Apostolopoulos is developing SEWL as an international research programme centred on systems-based explanation, empirical investigation, comparative population research, methodological development, and prevention. The programme remains open to empirical evaluation, critical scientific scrutiny, collaboration, and revision as the evidence develops.
Origins of SEWL
SEWL emerged from research on complex occupational environments and populations experiencing multiple occupational, organisational, social, and environmental conditions and exposures. Over time, this work raised broader questions that could not be adequately addressed by examining individual occupational hazards and outcomes in isolation:
How do exposures co-occur, accumulate, and potentially interact across working lives?
What systems and processes generate and pattern those exposures?
How may cumulative exposure histories contribute, through biological and other pathways, to population health and Human Functioning over time?
These questions progressively shifted the programme toward Working-Life Exposure Systems and exposure biographies, the upstream Labour Systems and exposure-generating processes through which they are shaped, and their longer-term consequences for population health and Human Functioning across the lifecourse.
Scientific Journey
The development of SEWL can be traced through eight interconnected and cumulative developments within this programme of scholarship:
Occupational and Population Health Research
Early research examined complex occupational environments and populations experiencing multiple health, behavioural, organisational, social, and environmental risks. This work highlighted the limitations of examining individual hazards and outcomes in isolation and the value of more integrated approaches to occupational and population health.
Complex Systems and Population Health
Engagement with complex systems approaches to population health provided a broader framework for understanding how multiple determinants and processes operate across levels, populations, and contexts, establishing systems thinking as an important foundation for the subsequent development of the programme.
Working-Life-Exposome
The reconceptualisation and advancement of the Working-Life-Exposome (WLE) extended this systems perspective to cumulative exposure across working lives, focusing attention on multidomain working-life exposures, their co-occurrence and potential interaction, and their accumulation and change over time.
Epidemiology of Working Life
Epidemiology of Working Life (EWL) broadened the epidemiological frame from particular occupational exposures and workplaces toward working life as a population-health system, including the cumulative and changing conditions through which working lives may contribute to health, Human Functioning, and inequality over time. This established working life itself as a broader object of epidemiological investigation.
Work-Structured Ageing
Work-Structured Ageing extended this trajectory toward ageing by proposing that ageing and later-life functional trajectories may be partly structured by cumulative experiences across working life. It directs attention to how working-life exposure systems and exposure biographies may contribute to heterogeneity in health and Human Functioning across adulthood and into later life.
Exposure-System Science
Exposure-System Science (ESS) extended this trajectory by investigating exposures in relation to the systems within which they arise and the processes through which they are generated, patterned, and distributed. SEWL develops this perspective specifically within working life, with Labour Systems as principal upstream empirical objects and Working-Life Exposure Systems as principal exposure-level objects of investigation.
Functional Sustainability
Functional Sustainability developed as a longitudinal construct concerned with the capacity to maintain, adapt, or recover Human Functioning and participation under changing demands and circumstances across the lifecourse. Within SEWL, it provides a way of investigating how working-life exposure histories and changing conditions may contribute to the sustainability of functioning over time.
Systems Epidemiology of Working Life
These developments converged in Systems Epidemiology of Working Life (SEWL), which brings Societal Organisation, Labour Systems, exposure-generating processes, Working-Life Exposure Systems and exposure biographies, Biological Embodiment and other pathways, Human Functioning, and Functional Sustainability into a common explanatory and empirical architecture.
SEWL represents the current development of this scientific trajectory rather than its endpoint. Its concepts, propositions, and methods remain open to empirical investigation, critical evaluation, refinement, revision, and further development.
Figure 18 presents a simplified account of the chronological and intellectual progression of these interconnected developments and their respective contributions to the emergence of SEWL.
Figure 18
Research Philosophy
My research is guided by an approach to scientific inquiry that combines epidemiological rigour with systems thinking, interdisciplinary integration, and explanation directed toward prevention. Five principles guide this approach:
Explanation across Levels
I am particularly interested in scientific problems requiring explanation across multiple levels—from individual exposures and biological processes to workplaces, organisations, Labour Systems, and broader societal conditions. The objective is not simply to add more variables to epidemiological models, but to understand how processes operating across levels contribute to population patterns of exposure, health, and Human Functioning.
Complexity without Abandoning Causal Rigour
Working-life systems are complex, dynamic, and heterogeneous. Systems approaches can help identify interactions, feedbacks, configurations, and emergent patterns, but complexity should not substitute for clear hypotheses, careful measurement, appropriate study design, and rigorous causal reasoning.
Time, Exposure Biographies, and the Lifecourse
Many consequences of working life may emerge through accumulation, timing, duration, sequencing, transitions, and change. I therefore approach working life longitudinally, with particular attention to exposure biographies and trajectories of health and Human Functioning across adulthood and the lifecourse.
Interdisciplinary Integration
The scientific problems addressed by SEWL cross conventional disciplinary boundaries. My approach integrates complementary perspectives while maintaining a clear epidemiological centre of gravity.
Explanation for Prevention
I view explanation and prevention as closely connected. Understanding how potentially harmful Working-Life Exposure Systems arise and where modifiable processes operate can help identify opportunities for prevention across organisational, institutional, and policy levels.
Together, these principles guide the development of SEWL as an empirically testable, methodologically rigorous, interdisciplinary, and prevention-oriented research programme.
Scientific Leadership
I am Yorghos Apostolopoulos, PhD, an occupational and systems epidemiologist, population health scientist, and the Founder and Scientific Lead of Systems Epidemiology of Working Life (SEWL).
My research has developed at the intersection of occupational and environmental health, epidemiology, population health, social science, and complex systems. Across nearly three decades in U.S. academic and research settings, this interdisciplinary trajectory increasingly focused on scientific problems requiring explanation across multiple exposures, levels, systems, and periods of the lifecourse.
Following my return to Europe, I am based in Athens, Greece, where I am continuing the development of SEWL as an international research programme. My current work focuses on its conceptual, methodological, and empirical development and on comparative and longitudinal population research. It also includes applications across occupational settings and the translation of explanatory knowledge to support prevention.
Scientific leadership of SEWL also involves building the collaborations, research capacity, data resources, and interdisciplinary connections required to investigate its propositions across populations, occupational settings, and Labour-System contexts. The objective is to develop the programme through rigorous empirical evaluation, critical scientific exchange, and collaborative research, rather than to establish it as a fixed or closed framework.
Professional Profile and Scientific Roles
Yorghos Apostolopoulos, PhD
Occupational & Systems Epidemiologist | Population Health ScientistFounder & Scientific Lead, Systems Epidemiology of Working Life (SEWL)Athens, Greece
Current Academic Appointment
Adjunct Professor of Occupational and Environmental HealthRocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health
University of Utah School of MedicineSalt Lake City, Utah, USA
Scientific Focus
Research focuses on Systems Epidemiology of Working Life, Working-Life Exposure Systems, exposome science, systems and lifecourse epidemiology, Human Functioning and Functional Sustainability, ageing, and occupational and population health.
Current research includes comparative and longitudinal population studies and methodological development, alongside conceptual and applied scholarship across commercial driving, firefighting, military and readiness-dependent work, maritime work, and other complex occupational settings.
Academic Background
PhD, Sociology — University of Connecticut, USAMA, Kinesiology — University of Connecticut, USABSc, Exercise Science — University of Athens, Greece
Scientific Profiles
ORCID 0000-0002-8295-5577
Curriculum Vitae