Leveraging worksite built environments to improve safety and health outcomes among long-haul truck drivers.
Project Overview
The nearly 1 million long-haul truck drivers (LHTD) in the U.S. experience disproportionately poor safety and health outcomes compared to other workers. Because of the unique nature of the long-haul truck driving profession, which requires its workers to be away from home for weeks at a time, LHTD are dependent on worksite built environments (e.g., truck stops) to meet their basic daily needs, including nutrition, physical activity, and sleep.
However, the current (but limited) research in this domain indicates that the characteristics of these locations significantly contribute to the poor safety and health outcomes endemic to LHTD. Thus, this line of research seeks to: 1) comprehensively characterize LHTD worksite built environments with regard to those dimensions that shape detrimental safety and health outcomes; and 2) leverage those insights to identify avenues for systems-level change that can generate improvements in safety and health outcomes across the U.S. LHTD population.
The Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health is part of the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health