Enhancing Malaysian Workers' Safety and Health through Safety Culture and Climate mHealth Interventions

PROJECT SUMMARY Occupational injuries and workplace accidents still occur on a tremendous scale, despite researchers’ development of successful occupational safety and health interventions for workplace outcomes. There is a particularly pressing need to 1) better investigate workplace safety in low- and middle-income countries

(LMICs), and 2) bolster methods for substantially reducing accidents. Improving safety climate (SC), a robust indicator of occupational safety across various industries and countries, is an effective strategy for positively impacting workplace safety outcomes and accident reduction. Positive SC perceptions motivate employees to

act safely, which leads to safer behaviors, fewer accidents/injuries, more engagement, and less turnover. However, there is a lack of empirical research in LMICs that examines the effectiveness of SC surveys and interventions, in part because the established methods in high-income countries (HICs) often use in-person

training that is impractical in LMICs. For Malaysia, we will develop a mobile SC intervention program designed to improve the safety and health of workers. The practice of medicine and healthcare using mobile devices (e.g., cell phones, tablets), called “mHealth,” has been used in LMICs to effectively and inexpensively impact

people’s health. Using mHealth as our foundation, we will create and test an evidence-based SC intervention program in Malaysia using instructional methods and training strategies that have been developed and practiced in the U.S. by our team. This project will address the significant knowledge gap regarding the impact

of SC interventions in LMICs. Through our collaborative efforts, this project will also equip our colleagues in Malaysia with effective and practical tools, new experiences, and greater knowledge related to SC, thereby enhancing their capacity to further investigate and improve SC for workers in Malaysian organizations across

high-risk industries. Our long-term goal is to improve workers’ health and safety by providing them and their organizations with effective strategies for building superior safety cultures and climates, which they can implement without outside support. Through this collaboration, an additional goal of this project is to establish

strong partnerships and build the occupational safety and health research capacity in Malaysia. R21 phase aims include: Aim 1. Translate and adapt our validated safety climate scale, other important outcome scales, and a safety audit tool for Malaysian workforces. Aim 2. Develop an mHealth-based SC intervention program

for Malaysia's workforces to improve their workplace cultures. Aim 3. Pilot test and revise the mHealth SC intervention program in Malaysia. R33 phase aims include: Aim 4. Implement the revised mHealth SC intervention program in three high-risk industries to cross-validate the intervention program. Aim 5. Establish

an Initial SC Benchmark for the Malaysia workforce.