Work, Family & Health Study and Network

In 2008, a five-year, multi-site, randomized, controlled trial of a workplace intervention was launched to explore whether changes made to the work environment itself could have impacts on worker health and well-being, as well as benefit the employer. The Work, Family & Health Study (WFHS) was conducted by the Work, Family & Health Network (WFHN), an interdisciplinary team of researchers brought together by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to provide evidence of how workplace practices and policies can impact work, family life, health outcomes, and the employer’s bottom line.


Meet the WFHN Researchers…

2 results found.

Read the published findings…

Do changes in the work environment influence work/family conflict? Health effects are still being discovered…

Scholarly publications from this study continue to emerge and contribute to the body of research in the “work and well-being” arena. Read the published findings…

Employer Toolkits to Facilitate Workplace Change

Download the toolkits used in the WFHS

The Work, Family & Health Study was the most comprehensive evaluation of a work/family intervention undertaken at the time. These freely available materials can help workplace teams find ways to reduce work/family conflict and increase productivity by decreasing unnecessary work and increasing everyone’s control over their time.

The WFHS Data is Available

Researchers can access the data in several ways…

The Work, Family & Health Study (WFHS) was a group-randomized field experiment which took place at two employers representing different industries. The information technology division of a Fortune 500 company (pseudonym: Tomo) had 56 study groups with 7-60 employees each, and the extended-care company (pseudonym: Leef) had 30 work sites of 30-89 employees each. Tomo study groups and Leef worksites were randomly assigned to intervention or usual practice (UP) conditions.

The multi-faceted intervention was designed to increase supervisor and coworker support for work-family integration employees’ perception of control over their work time.

All employee and manager participants were assessed at baseline, and at 6–, 12–, and 18–months post baseline. A wide range of measures were collected, including respondents’ social, economic, psychological and physical well-being.

“This is science that rests on a public investment”

The New York Times has published an interactive data chart (at the end of the article) that enables readers to learn about which grants at Harvard have been terminated by the current administration by pointing to projects categorized by scientific…

Our Spring 2025 newsletter has hatched!

Here’s the latest news from the Harvard Pop Center including… Introducing the next cohort of Bell Postdoctoral Fellows Harvard Pop Center goes to PAA 2025 The latest findings of our affiliates …
HCPDS celebrates 60 years

Announcing the 2025 Dillon Family Fellowship Award recipient

Congratulations to Harvard Pop Center Graduate Student Affiliate Soroush Moallef on being named the recipient of the 2025 Dillon Family Fellowship Award. This long-standing monetary award was created to benefit graduate students at the Harvard T.H. Chan…
Dillon Family Award