Health Workforce Policy and Occupational Safety: Protecting Health Workers to Protect the Public

The global health workforce — comprising tens of millions of nurses, physicians, and allied health professionals — represents both a critical foundation of public health infrastructure and one of the world’s largest and most distinctively exposed occupational populations. The public health implications of health workforce conditions are therefore twofold: First, healthcare workers face a severe and well-documented constellation of occupational hazards: long working hours, chronic understaffing, biological and ergonomic exposures, workplace violence, and high psychosocial demands. The resulting burden of burnout, psychological distress, occupational injury, and infectious disease among health workers constitutes a population-level public health problem in its own right, warranting the same epidemiological scrutiny and policy attention as any other major occupational group. Second, the conditions under which health workers operate are upstream determinants of population health more broadly: workforce attrition reduces healthcare accessibility; staffing shortfalls are associated with increased community-level mortality and preventable harm; and a depleted, insufficiently protected workforce is less able to respond to public health emergencies and infectious disease threats. As healthcare demand grows alongside ageing populations and emerging disease burdens, evidence-based public health policy and occupational regulation must address both dimensions simultaneously. This Research Topic examines the relationships between state-, regional-, and national-level health workforce policies, occupational health and safety protections, and public health outcomes — both within the health workforce as an occupational population and across the communities they serve. Despite growing evidence linking healthcare worker health and working conditions to population-level mortality, health equity, service accessibility, and emergency preparedness, policy responses remain fragmented and inconsistent across jurisdictions. This Research Topic aims to consolidate current evidence, identify critical policy gaps, and highlight legislative, regulatory, and cross-jurisdictional policy models that address the structural determinants of occupational ill-health among healthcare professionals and the downstream population health consequences of workforce underprotection. By bringing together perspectives from public health, occupational health science, health policy, epidemiology, and nursing and medical sciences, this collection seeks to generate evidence that informs equity-sensitive, population-level reforms capable of protecting the health workforce and strengthening public health outcomes across communities. Suitable themes for manuscripts include, but are not limited to: 1. Health workforce legislation and population health outcomes: How do state- or national-level staffing mandates and workforce protection laws affect population-level mortality, preventable harm, disease burden, and equitable access to care? 2. Occupational health and safety regulation for healthcare workers: What regulatory mechanisms protect healthcare workers — as a major occupational population — from physical, biological, ergonomic, and psychosocial hazards, and how effective and consistently enforced are these protections across jurisdictions? 3. Working hours regulation and occupational health burden: What is the population-level burden of long working hours, overtime, and inadequate rest among health workers, and how do legislative limits affect occupational injury, illness, and workforce sustainability? 4. Mental health and psychosocial risk policy for the health workforce: How do government-led mental health frameworks and psychosocial risk policies affect the prevalence of burnout, psychological distress, and occupational ill-health in this workforce population, and what are the downstream public health consequences of policy inaction? 5. Workforce distribution policy and health equity: How do national and regional workforce planning and distribution policies shape population access to care, address geographic and demographic maldistribution, and advance or impede health equity? 6. Occupational safety and infection prevention policy: How do national occupational safety standards — addressing biological hazards, workplace violence, and ergonomic risks — shape the health of healthcare workers as an occupational population and their capacity to sustain public health functions? 7. Healthcare workforce supply and population health outcomes: How do national and regional policies governing the education, training, licensure, and international recruitment of healthcare professionals shape the adequacy of workforce supply, and what are the downstream consequences of supply shortfalls for population health, service accessibility, and health system resilience?8. Policy responses to health workforce crises and public health emergencies: How have governments responded to acute workforce shortfalls and public health emergencies — including the structural vulnerabilities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic — and what evidence can inform durable, population-level reform? 9. Implementation and evaluation of health workforce policy: What barriers and facilitators shape the adoption, enforcement, and public health effectiveness of health workforce policies across jurisdictions, and how can implementation science strengthen policy translation? Topic editors: Sung-Heui Bae, Betül Sönmez, HYANGYUOL LEE Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/81789/health-workforce-policy-and-occupational-safety-protecting-health-workers-to-protect-the-public