Glorian Sorensen

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Biography

Glorian Sorensen, PhD, MPH, is Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Emerita, at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The core of Dr. Sorensen’s research has focused on testing the effectiveness of theory-driven interventions targeting changes in the work organization and environment as well as in workers’ safety and health behaviors. Her research contributed to the scientific foundation integrating occupational safety and health with other worksite interventions to promote worker safety, health and well-being.

Dr. Sorensen is the Founding Director of the Harvard Center for Work, Health and Well-being, with initial funding awarded in 2007 by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health through its Total Worker Health® Program. The Center continues to focus on protecting and promoting worker safety, health and wellbeing through improved conditions of work, and conducts ground-breaking research to determine the effectiveness of workplace policies and practices designed to support and protect workers and to identify working conditions related to improved outcomes for employees and organizations.

Dr. Sorensen and her research team were among the first to demonstrate that the integration of occupational health and safety with worksite health promotion can significantly enhance health behavior change among blue-collar workers. Her seminal 1989 study, using a cluster randomized worksite intervention trial to test the integration of occupational health and safety and worker health behaviors, demonstrated that this integrated approach significantly improved smoking cessation rates among blue-collar workers. Across multiple decades in over a dozen large-scale trials, her research team designed and tested integrated interventions across a range of industries, including manufacturing, construction, health care, social service, food service and transportation, and with small and large worksites. This research focused particularly on low-wage and blue-collar workers, among whom on-the-job risks and risk-related behaviors are especially prevalent. Her research has demonstrated the significance to organizational change to worker health outcomes and the methods to successfully implement and measure these changes.

Dr. Sorensen also conducted a series of tobacco control studies in India between 2003 and 2024, in collaboration with the Healis-Sekhsaria Institute of Public Health in Mumbai. Funded by the U.S. National Cancer Institute, this research focused on developing and testing effective strategies for broad-based implementation of evidence-based tobacco control interventions using existing organizational infrastructures and accommodating the realities of low-resource settings. For example, in the Bihar School Teachers Study, she and her colleagues demonstrated the efficacy of a tobacco use cessation intervention for school teachers in the state of Bihar.

At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. Sorensen directed the Center for Community-based Research from 1992 to 2021, and served as the Faculty Vice President for Faculty Development and Director for the Office for Faculty Development from 2007 to 2016.

She was awarded the Total Worker Health® Founder’s Award by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health h in 2022, and in 2023 was recognized by the American Journal of Health Promotion as one of “The Ten Most Influential Women Scholars in Health Promotion.”

Education and Training

• MPH, Public Health
  University of Minnesota
• PhD, Occupational Sociology
  University of Minnesota Department of Sociology
• Post-doctoral training , Minnesota Heart Health Study
  University of Minnesota Department of Physiological Hygiene

Publications

• Predicting COVID-19 Cases in Nursing Homes of California and Ohio: Does the Work Environment Matter?

  Roy S, Collins JE, Boden LI, Katz JN, Wagner GR, Sorensen G, Williams JAR. J Occup Environ Med 2024 Oct 01

  PMID: 38955810

• Upscaling a behavioural intervention program for tobacco use cessation - A randomised controlled study.

  Gupta PC, Narake S, Sinha DN, Nagler E, Pednekar MS, Sorensen G. Prev Med Rep 2023

  PMID: 37908199

• Work and worker health in the post-pandemic world: a public health perspective.

  Peters SE, Dennerlein JT, Wagner GR, Sorensen G. Lancet Public Health 2022 02

  PMID: 35122760

• Implementation of an organizational intervention to improve low-wage food service workers' safety, health and wellbeing: findings from the Workplace Organizational Health Study.

  Sorensen G, Peters SE, Nielsen K, Stelson E, Wallace LM, Burke L, Nagler EM, Roodbari H, Karapanos M, Wagner GR. BMC Public Health 2021 10 16

  PMID: 34656090

• Thriving from Work: Conceptualization and Measurement.

  Peters SE, Sorensen G, Katz JN, Gundersen DA, Wagner GR. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2021 07 05

  PMID: 34281131