Master in Occupational Health and Sustainable Work

Are you interested in a combination of occupational healthcare, organization/policy science and health education? Would you like to advise organizations and policymakers about employees' health and sustainable employability? Would you like to help people stay healthy and productive throughout their careers, as well as those with chronic diseases and other disabilities? Then it would help if you considered getting a master’s in Occupational Health and Sustainable Work.

The program combines theories of health and labour participation with practical training, enabling you to formulate and implement health strategies and interventions. You’ll also learn how you can evaluate these strategies and interventions. As of the academic year 2022/2023, the program will be updated to stay aligned with contemporary challenges in work, health and career and the changing world of work. Upon graduation, you’ll have all the knowledge and skills you need for a career in occupational health consultancy, management, policy-making and research.

Fast facts

• The best of three worlds: occupational healthcare, organizational science and employee health promotion
• Strong emphasis on practical skills training
• Bio-psychosocial approach to health and labour participation
• 1-year full-time or 2-year part-time, taught in English
• Study load per week, full-time program: 12-14 hours class, 6 hours group work, 16-18 hours independent study; part-time program: one day a week
• Starts in September

Why this program?

'Sustainable work' has shot to the top of the agenda in recent years. Governments and companies need employees to remain healthy and productive throughout their careers. Good employee health and decent work are also among the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and urgent action is needed. How do we create decent jobs, which provide a good match between the individual and the job? How to balance work and family lives? How to maintain employees’ health, employability and functional capacities over the years in a context of constantly changing labour markets and social welfare policies? There is a real need – and a job market – for experts on these contemporary issues.

Occupational Health and Sustainable Work focuses on health, well-being and employability across the lifespan. You learn to weigh up the diverse interests of workers, families and companies. You will be taught about the changing world of work and social welfare and how you can respond to that. In line with that, you’ll develop and evaluate cutting-edge interventions and strategies to promote sustainable working lives.

Multidisciplinary and practical program

The health issues that you encounter in the workplace are very diverse. A high workload might cause stress, an inadequately designed workplace might cause physical problems and throughout their career, some employees develop chronic illness. They may be equally varied. You may be asked to give strategic advice, formulate health policies or you may be handling individual cases.

The program will therefore provide you with multidisciplinary and practical training that combines the best of different worlds. You’ll learn about occupational healthcare, organizational and policy science, and health promotion. By combining this with special communications and skills training sessions you’ll learn how to formulate, implement and evaluate evidence-based interventions. The multifaceted nature of the program ensures that you'll have all the knowledge you need to adequately handle many different situations later on in your career.

Toolbox for the OHSW professional

You’ll gain up-to-date knowledge of contemporary topics such as the changing world of work and social welfare, work-life balance, work engagement, health promotion, extended working lives, and mental health and physical health problems of workers. To get a better grip on these topics, you will be trained to apply a bio-psychosocial approach to labour participation, in moral case deliberation and evidence-based occupational medicine.

In the Master of Occupational Health and Sustainable Work, a strong accent will be on training to equip the OHCW professional with a toolbox of practical skills to be able to translate theoretical knowledge into practice. Throughout the Master's program, three major lines of training can be distinguished, each with their unique contribution to a well-balanced toolbox content: 1. A biopsychosocial approach to labour participation: ICF trajectory; 2. Evidence-Based Occupational Health trajectory; and 3. Intervention and Communication Skills trajectory. You will also be taught about the relevant methods needed for research in the field of Occupational Health and Sustainable Work. Upon graduation, you'll therefore be completely up to date with the latest cutting-edge techniques.

Occupational Health and Sustainable Work research at Maastricht University

Maastricht University’s Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences offers an excellent study environment as it has a long-standing tradition of research into health issues. Several research programs focus on different aspects of work, health and career. Relevant examples are:

• A large-scale prospective cohort study on the determinants of health and labour participation of ageing workers. This study will reveal both the facilitating factors and barriers for prolonged working careers, for relevant subgroups of workers separately (e.g. job title/sector, gender, chronically ill, or shift workers).
• Evaluation of the intervention “Healthy HR”, which is a dialogue-based online toolkit for the improvement of health and sustainable employability of lower-educated workers.
• A qualitative study among managers in the health care and education sectors on whether and how they pick up early signals of burnout among their subordinates, and whether they take action to prevent burn-out.
• A qualitative study among healthcare workers in the hospital who deliver work-related care to patients with chronic diseases, on barriers and facilitators and what they need to improve the delivery of this care.

The knowledge gained from these research projects will serve as input for the courses in Occupational Health and Sustainable Work.