Laura Punnett, ScD

Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Co-Director, Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace

Senior Associate, UML Center for Women and Work

 

Punnett, ScD, teaches occupational ergonomics and epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.  She was a founding member of the Department of Work Environment in 1987 and is now based in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.  Her research career began with a focus on work-related musculoskeletal disorders and expanded to include assessment of physical and psychosocial stressors in the work environment; methodologic challenges such as the healthy worker effect; the contribution of working conditions to socioeconomic disparities and gender differences in health; and the effectiveness of workplace interventions to improve safety, health, and employment outcomes.  

 

Since 2006, Punnett, ScD, has been Co-Director of the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW), one of the first two NIOSH Centers for Excellence in Total Worker Health® (TWH). The CPH-NEW research team has a particular focus on developing a definition of TWH that emphasizes the design, implementation and evaluation of participatory workplace interventions.  In this context, she has recently been using mixed methods to examine work organization factors and their interactions with non-occupational factors for worker health and health behaviors.

 

*1 CPH credit available*