Erika Sabbath

Erika Sabbath, ScD, is an associate professor in the Older Adults and Families, Health, and Mental Health fields of practice. Her research examines the contribution of the work environment, specifically psychosocial exposures and organizational policies and practices, to population health and disparities, both during working life and after retirement. She also adapts and uses emerging exposure assessment methods to quantify occupational exposures across the lifecourse and their association with later-life morbidity, mortality, and disparities.

She is the PI of the NIOSH-funded Boston Hospital Workers Health Study (BHWHS), which integrates administrative and survey data from 22,000 patient care workers at two large Boston hospitals to assess the ways that working conditions affect worker health and well-being. She was the PI of a K01 career development from NIOSH.

Her expertise in workplace stress and health was recognized by her Early Career Achievement Award at the 2019 APA/NIOSH Work, Stress, and Health conference. Her work has been published in outlets such as American Journal of Public Health, International Journal of Epidemiology, Neurology, and Social Work. She holds a doctorate in social epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the University of Paris XI-Sud.

EDUCATION

• B.A., Washington University in St. Louis
• M.Sc., Harvard University
• Sc.D., Université Paris XI-Sud
• Sc.D., Harvard University

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Occupational health disparities; workplace stressors and associated health/economic consequences; prolonged health effects of occupational exposures; health across the retirement transition; work-related trauma

EXPERTISE

• Aging
• Disparities
• Innovations in Research Methods
• Stress and Health at the Workplace

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

Sabbath, E.L., Hawkins, S.S., Baum, C.F. (2020). State-level changes in firearm laws and workplace homicide rates: United States, 2011 to 2017. American Journal of Public Health 110(2): 230-236.

Sabbath, E.L. (2019). The workplace, social work, and social justice: Framing an emerging research and practice agenda. Social Work 64 (4), 293-300.

Sabbath, E.L., Yang, J., Dennerlein, J.T., Boden, L.I., Hashimoto, D., Sorensen, G. (2019). Paradoxical impact of a patient-handling intervention on injury rate disparity among hospital workers. American Journal of Public Health, 109(4), 618-625.