Police Organizational Stress: Impacts on Long-term Health and Wellness and Opportunities for Mitigation

The applicant proposes to study the prevalence of organizational stressors in police work through a longitudinal design of 175 Buffalo Police Department officers over three waves of data collection. The proposed application will rely on the Buffalo Cardio-Metabolic Occupational Police Stress (BCOPS) cohort study (2004-2019). The research team will analyze the longitudinal dataset using generalized linear models to determine the prevalence of organizational stressors. This longitudinal dataset will be augmented with interviews of 100 Buffalo Police Department officers and supervisory staff to understand organizational stressors and effective ways to mitigate them. The primary study model will explore how organizational stressors (lack of support, effort-reward imbalance, and daily hassles) interact with physiological indicators (cortisol awakening and response in the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) Axis) to create health and wellness outcomes. The primary wellness outcomes to be studied are physical and psychological, such as cardiovascular disease, metabolic derangement, adiposity, burnout, exhaustion, hopelessness and cellular ageing. Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law, and complies with Part 200 Uniform Requirements - 2 CFR 200.210(a)(14). CA/NCF