Workplace Mental Health at Risk as Key Federal Agency Faces Cuts
In Connecticut, construction workers in the Local 478 union
who complete addiction treatment are connected with a recovery coach who checks
in daily, attends recovery meetings with them, and helps them navigate the
return to work for a year.
In Pennsylvania, doctors applying for credentials at
Geisinger hospitals are
not required to answer intrusive questions about mental health care
they’ve received, reducing the stigma around clinicians seeking treatment.
The workplace is the new ground zero for addressing mental
health. That means companies — employees and supervisors alike — must confront
crises, from addiction to suicide. The two seemingly unrelated advances in
Connecticut and Pennsylvania have one common factor: They grew out of the work
of a little known federal agency called the National Institute for Occupational
Safety and Health.
It’s one of the key federal agencies leading workplace
mental health efforts, from decreasing alarmingly high rates of suicide among
construction workers to addressing burnout and depression among health care
workers.
But after gaining considerable traction during the covid-19
pandemic, that work is now imperiled. The Trump administration has fired
a majority of NIOSH staffers and is proposing
severe reductions to its budget.
Private industry and nonprofits may be able to fill some of
the gap, but they can’t match the federal government’s resources. And some
companies may not prioritize worker well-being above profits.
About 60%
of employees worldwide say their job is the chief factor affecting
their mental health. Research suggests workplace stress causes about 120,000 deaths and
accounts for up
to 8% of health costs in the U.S. each year.
“Workplace mental health is one of the most underappreciated
yet critical areas we could intervene on,” said Thomas Cunningham, a former
senior behavioral scientist at NIOSH who took a buyout this year. “We were just
starting to get some strong support from all the players involved,” he said.
“This administration has blown that apart.”
NIOSH, established in 1970 by
the same law that created the better-known Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, is charged with producing research that informs workplace
safety regulations. It’s best known for monitoring black lung disease in coal
miners and for testing masks, like the N95s used during the pandemic.
As part of the mass firing of federal workers this spring,
NIOSH was slated to lose
upward of 900 employees. After pushback from legislators — primarily over
coal miner and first responder safety — the administration reinstated
328. It’s not clear if any rehired workers focus on mental health
initiatives.
At least two
lawsuits challenging
the firings are winding through the courts. Meanwhile, hundreds of
NIOSH employees remain
on administrative leave, unable to work.
Emily Hilliard, a press secretary for the Department of
Health and Human Services, asserted in a statement that “the nation’s critical
public health functions remain intact and effective,” including support for
coal miners and firefighters through NIOSH. “Improving the mental health of
American workers remains a key priority for HHS, and that work is ongoing,” she
wrote.
She did not answer specific questions from KFF Health News
about whether any reinstated NIOSH employees lead mental health efforts or who
is continuing such work.
Bottom of Form
Reducing Suicides and Addiction in Construction and Mining
Over 5,000
construction workers die by suicide annually — five times the number
who die from work-related injuries. Miners suffer high rates too.
And nearly a fifth of workers in both industries have a substance use
disorder, double
the rate among all U.S. workers.
Kyle Zimmer recognized
these issues as early as 2010. That’s when he started a members’ assistance
program for the International Union of
Operating Engineers Local 478 in Connecticut. He hired a licensed
clinician on retainer and developed partnerships with local treatment
facilities.
At first, workers pushed back, said Zimmer, who recently
retired after 25 years in the union, many as director of health and safety.
Their perception was, “If I speak up about this issue, I’m
going to be blackballed from the industry,” he said.
But slowly, that changed — with NIOSH’s help, Zimmer said.
The agency developed an approach to worker safety
called Total Worker
Health, which identifies physical and mental health as critical to
occupational safety. It also shifts the focus from how individuals can keep
themselves safe to how policies and environments can be changed to keep them
safe.
Over decades, the concept spread from research journals and
universities to industry conferences, unions, and eventually workers, Zimmer
said. People began accepting that mental health was an occupational safety
issue, he said. That paved the way for NIOSH’s Miner Health
Program to develop resources
on addiction and for Zimmer to establish the recovery coaching program
in Connecticut.
“We have beat that stigma down by a lot,” Zimmer said.
Other countries have made more progress on mental health at
work, said Sally
Spencer-Thomas, co-chair of the International Association for Suicide
Prevention’s workplace special interest group. But with the growth of the Total
Worker Health approach, a 2022
surgeon general report on the topic, and increasing research, the U.S.
appeared to finally be catching up. The recent cuts to NIOSH suggest “we’re
kind of losing our footing,” she said.
Last year, Natalie
Schwatka, an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Public Health’s
Center for Health, Work & Environment, received a five-year NIOSH grant
to build
a toolkit to help leaders in labor-intensive industries, such as
construction and mining, strengthen worker safety and mental health.
While many companies connect people to treatment, few focus
on preventing mental illness, Schwatka said. NIOSH funding “allows us to do
innovative things that maybe industry wouldn’t necessarily start.”
Her team planned to test the toolkit with eight construction
companies in the coming years. But with few NIOSH employees left to process
annual renewals, the funds could stop flowing anytime.
The consequence of losing such research is not confined to
academia, Zimmer said. “Workers’ health and safety is very much in jeopardy.”
Health Care Sector Braces for Fallout From NIOSH Cuts
For a long time, clinicians have had troubling rates
of addiction and suicide risk. Just after the height of the pandemic, a
NIOSH survey found nearly half of health workers reported feeling
burned out and nearly half intended to look for a new job. The agency declared
a mental health crisis in that workforce.
NIOSH received
$20 million through the American Rescue Plan Act to create a national
campaign to improve the mental health of health workers.
The results included a step-by-step
guide for hospital leaders to improve systems to support their
employees, as well as tips
and suggested language for leaders to discuss well-being and for
workers to advocate for better policies.
Cunningham, the behavioral scientist who left NIOSH this
year, helped lead the effort. He said the goal was to move beyond asking health
workers to be resilient or develop meditation skills.
“We’re not saying resilience is bad, but we’re trying to
emphasize that’s not the first thing we need to focus on,” he said.
Instead, NIOSH suggested eliminating intrusive questions
about mental health that weren’t relevant to keeping patients safe from
hospital credentialing forms and offering workers more input on how their
schedules are made.
The agency partnered on this work with the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation, named
after an emergency medicine doctor who died by suicide during the pandemic. The
foundation extended the campaign by helping health systems in four states
implement pieces of the guide and learn from one another.
Foundation leaders recently appeared
on Capitol Hill with Noah Wyle, who plays an emergency physician on the TV
series “The Pitt,” to advocate for renewed federal funding for this work.
Corey
Feist, foundation CEO and co-founder, said renewing that funding to NIOSH
is crucial to get this guide out to all hospitals.
Without those resources, “it’s just going to really delay
this transformation of health care that needs to happen,” he said.
Who Can Fill the Gap?
TJ Lyons, a
multidecade construction industry safety professional who has worked at
big-name companies such as Gilbane, Turner, and DPR Construction, is confident
that workplace mental health will remain a priority despite the NIOSH cuts.
General contractors and project owners have been
incorporating budget lines for mental health support for years, he said,
sharing an example of a $1 billion project that included a mental health
clinician on call for four hours several days a week. Workers would make
appointments to sit in their pickup trucks during lunch breaks and talk to her,
he said.
Now when these big companies subcontract with smaller firms,
they often ask if the subcontractors provide mental health support for workers,
Lyons said.
But others are skeptical that industry can replace NIOSH
efforts.
Several workplace safety experts said smaller companies lack
the means to commission research studies and larger companies may not share the
results publicly, as a federal agency would. Nor would they have the same
credibility.
“Private industry is going to provide what the people paying
them want to provide,” said a NIOSH employee and member of the American
Federation of Government Employees union, currently on administrative leave,
who was granted anonymity for fear of professional retaliation.
Without federal attention on workplace mental health,
“people may leave the workforce,” she said. “Workers may die.”
Cheshire gets DOT grant to replace of abutments of Notch Road Bridge
CHESHIRE —
The town has received a $1.24 million grant from the state Department of
Transportation to replace of abutments of the Notch Road Bridge over
the Ten Mile River.
Cheshire Assistant Town Manager Andrew Martelli said
Tuesday the schedule for replacing the bridge abutment will start with public
meetings next summer, with the project going out to bid in January 2027.
Construction is expected to begin in spring 2027 and completed in late fall
2027.
The estimated cost of the project is $2.5 million, including
the design.
The 30-foot, single-span bridge, built in 1970, is
considered to be in good condition, aside from the abutments, which have been
subjected to heavy flows and stream scour due to runoff
from Mixville Pond and the Mixville Pond Spillway. The bridge
serves an average of 400 motor vehicles per day, Martelli said.
Motorists should expect restricted access during
construction, Martelli said.
Cheshire's bridge project was one of 15 chosen by the state,
with a total of $17.3 million in grants announced Monday. Other towns receiving
grants include New Milford, Newtown, Redding, Sharon,
Southbury, Stafford, Stamford, and Waterbury.
The local bridge program was created in 1984 as part of the
state’s infrastructure renewal program. In Connecticut, there are approximately
4,200 local bridges and culverts on locally maintained roads, officials said,
adding the construction and maintenance of those structures is the
responsibility of the cities and towns that own them.
According to the DOT, the cost-matching grant program
provides 50% of project costs for locally owned bridges. Cities and towns
administer all design and construction aspects of their projects, while
the DOT oversees project milestones and provides guidance for the
municipalities.
Since 2016, the State Local Bridge Program has provided
approximately $162 million in grants to Connecticut’s cities and towns,
officials said.
“This program helps keep locally owned bridges in good
repair, ensuring they remain safe and reliable for all travelers,” DOT
Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto said. “As the program continues to deliver
real results for communities both big and small, its popularity grows year
after year. We’re proud to support these efforts and get the projects to the
finish line.”
Manchester staff present plan to expand Olcott Street landfill, lengthen life of facility
MANCHESTER —
A plan to expand the
landfill near Olcott Street, previously projected to close this year,
could add 20 years to its life.
At a July 1 Board of Directors meeting, town staff discussed
a proposal to add an additional 8.5 acres onto the facility with a horizontal
expansion intended to help the landfill remain open until 2045. Construction
costs would be up to $12 million, but would net the town's sanitation fund
around $200 million over the remaining life of the facility.
Environmental Services Manager Scott Atkin said the
66-acre landfill dates back as far as the late 1940s, serving local waste needs
until adjusting its operations around 2000. Now, he said, the facility takes
waste from town operations to save costs and from commercial customers
as an enterprise.
Under
the 2025-26 fiscal year budget, the town anticipates nearly $10 million in
revenue from the Sanitation Department, primarily from $8.3 million in
commercial tipping fees and $1 million in sludge disposal. Roughly $5 million
of that revenue will be allocated for curbside trash and recycling collection,
and $2.1 million will cover landfill operations.
No action was taken on the landfill on July 1, but the plan
would require approvals from the Board of Directors and the state Department of Energy
and Environmental Protection to move forward.
Stephanou said Manchester believes that DEEP is supportive
of the project as the landfill is a substantial asset to both the town and the
state, with Connecticut
facing a waste disposal crisis due to a lack of in-state options.
"We're looking at either shipping our solid waste out
of state to landfills across the country or trying to incentivize households
and community properties to generate less waste, which is a challenge,"
Stephanou said. "We think that this plan would fit in well with what our
options are across Connecticut right now."
Director of Public Works Tim Bockus said the facility was
originally expected to close "a long time ago," but additional
controls on what waste was accepted has helped extend the facility's life
beyond an anticipated 2025 closure.
Atkin said the landfill has enough space to remain open
until early 2028 in its current state, and the town could extend the
life to early 2032 with previously permitted changes to the configuration.
Depending on how the town regulates the landfill's usage, the expansion could
bring the facility's life closer to 2050, he said.
Bockus said the proposal would be funded by the landfill's
revenues and would not require the town to ask for funding from taxpayers.
Community engagement will still be necessary as part of DEEP's requirements, he
said.
Town Manager Steve Stephanou said Manchester looked
at the potential for vertical expansion, but wanted to avoid creating a
"Mt. Trash" that would significantly impact the look of the
community.
Bockus said if and when the landfill closes, the town has an
account set aside to cover the costs of closure and a required 30-year
post-closure monitoring program. After the closure, the land could be used for
passive recreation, solar fields, or other facilities that wouldn't need to go
deep into the ground.
Members of the Board of Directors mostly asked questions on
the details of the project, but some discussed the eventual financial impact of
the landfill's closure.
Mayor Jay Moran said that the longer the landfill remains
open, the longer that the town won't have to add municipal trash collection
into its general fund.
"I don't think people understand how much that saves
us," Moran said.