NEWS

David M. DeJoy

William A. Owens Award 2008

David M. DeJoy, professor of health promotion and behavior, studies the behavioral and psychological aspects of workplace safety, particularly the organizational factors that promote or obstruct it. In 1993 DeJoy authored, in the Journal of Occupational Medicine, a seminal paper that made the case for integrating the scientific and business aspects of workplace safety. His model emphasized organizational factors, as opposed to blaming accidents on workers or a lack of training; it is based on increased cooperation between unrelated departments to achieve common goals such as improved safety. This and DeJoy’s other work on integrating human resources within organizations have inspired new research directions in the field, as well as numerous real-world applications. Today many of the country’s largest employers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention among them, have adopted his model.