*2.8. TWH Partnership and Stakeholder Involvement*

As discussed throughout this article, partnership and stakeholder involvement across multiple factions and disciplines has been and continues to be critical in advancing TWH research, practice, policy, and capacity building. To move the field of TWH forward, all stakeholders must work together, take ownership, and contribute.

Fundamental but sometimes challenging is demonstrating the value that a TWH approach brings to long-term sustainability of employers, industry, and society. Perhaps one of the most critical developments is inspiring the gatekeepers of worker health—professionals in labor, healthcare, and public health—to engage in new ways that bring greater visibility to the value of an integrated approach to worker safety and health [26,43,44]. Scholars believe this high-level engagement could stimulate more alignment of the field with long-standing and current social movements (such as labor rights, worker advocacy, sustainability-related responsible business practices, and paid family leave) and encourage broader collaboration among and within labor, academia, government, and industry [45]. For example, novel solutions to access worker populations could develop with new or better engagement with economic development [46], community-based, and labor organizations. The

relationship between health and economic prosperity and national security is a priority of the U.S. Surgeon General [47].

In addition, new models of interventions at the workplace, community, industry, and society levels could establish the results sought for simultaneously addressing work- and non-work-related risks. Many of these actions involve expanding the role of professionals who protect worker safety, health, and well-being. Examples of NIOSH successes in increasing recognition of the relationship between work and health, as well as the role of community partnerships, include TWH participation in the U.S. National Academies Action Collaborative on Business Engagement in Building Healthy Communities and the U.S. National Academies of Medicine Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience [48,49].

Finally, a significant accomplishment in the development of new partners in recent years was the Office for TWH's co-sponsorship with the NIH Office of Disease Prevention and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to convene the 2015 NIH Pathways to Prevention Workshop *Total Worker Health*®: What's Work Got to Do With It? [18]. Approval for the conference's TWH theme required buy-in from several other NIH offices/institutes and U.S. federal agencies, making this a noteworthy TWH partnership achievement in raising awareness of the importance of TWH issues across U.S. federal agencies. The workshop had over 700 registered attendees, making it the largest TWH event to date. Outcomes include a review of the literature on research gaps and an independent panel report on future research priorities [23,50] as well as a new partnership with the American Heart Association and NHLBI to plan a meeting on workplace health.
