**2. Materials and Methods**

UIC researchers used a mixed-methods approach to evaluate the overall HWC process. For this study, researchers used an exploratory qualitative study design with focus group and interview methodology to examine HWC participants' perceptions of the role of TA provided by UIC in the HWC, including during the period leading up to the six sessions, the periods between sessions, and the period after the sessions. The UIC Institutional Review Board approved this study in 2018.

All 31 individuals who participated in the HWC in some capacity were invited to participate in this study. Information about the HWC participants is included in Table 2. Seven UIC TA providers participated in the HWC sessions, including two UIC faculty members, three staff members, and two student research assistants. Seven labor expert TA providers participated in at least one HWC session, and five participated in two or more sessions. Four of these labor expert TA providers represented Chicago-area worker centers, two represented national labor advocacy organizations, and one represented a labor-focused academic research center at UIC that is not part of the UIC Center for Healthy Work. A total of 17 representatives of other organizations participated in the HWC sessions as TA recipients, including representatives from local health departments (LHDs), public health and other health advocacy organizations, a hospital system, an academic institution other than UIC, a local board of health, two worker centers, and a labor union.

Of these TA recipients, 14 came to the HWC with other partners (see the TA Recipient Groups in Table 2). These TA recipient groups focused on action planning with their partners. The remaining three TA recipients attended the HWC sessions as individual representatives of their organization, and focused their efforts on action planning within their own organization's purview. Each TA recipient group or individual organization joined the HWC with a pre-determined focus for action planning. These foci are briefly described in Table 2.

Several instruments were developed to obtain information about UIC TA providers' roles in the HWC from the various HWC participants. A semi-structured focus group guide was developed to collect perspectives from the UIC facilitators immediately following the conclusion of the HWC. One semi-structured interview guide was designed to collect perspectives from the labor experts, who served as TA providers in the HWC sessions, immediately following their involvement in the HWC, and another semi-structured interview guide was designed to collect perspectives from non-labor, primarily health-focused TA recipients three months after the conclusion of the HWC sessions. Notably, both of the interview guides included questions aimed at understanding other features of the HWC and impacts of participating in the sessions. The results reported in this study focus on the aforementioned concepts around TA provided by UIC. Table 3 compares the content relevant to this study included in the interview guides and the focus group guide, all of which are further described below.

UIC TA providers were invited to participate in an in-person focus group in the days immediately following the final HWC session. The focus group guide was designed to capture UIC TA provider's perceptions of what TA recipients gained from the HWC process, perceptions of UIC TA providers' own roles inside and outside of the HWC sessions, and perceptions of impacts that the HWC process had on UIC TA providers' own thinking. Labor expert TA providers were invited to participate in a follow-up phone interview in this same time frame. All TA recipients were invited to participate in a phone interview approximately three months after the final HWC session, as were TA providers who had continued to engage with TA recipients beyond the formal HWC six-meeting period. The immediate post-HWC guide and the three-month post-HWC interview guide were designed to capture labor experts' and TA recipients' perceptions of the same concepts as the UIC TA provider focus group guide, as well as their impressions of the HWC process more generally. TA recipients were interviewed at the three-month time point instead of immediately post-HWC to better capture ways in which the TA recipients had applied what they had learned from the HWC since the conclusion of the sessions, and any implementation of activities planned during the HWC sessions.
