David M HallmanUniversity of Gävle · Centre for Musculoskeletal Research (CBF)
David M Hallman
PhD
About
124
Publications
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Introduction
Physical activity and occupational health
Additional affiliations
September 2006 - present
Publications
Publications (124)
Introduction
Eldercare organizations face high sickness absence rates and staff turnover and rely heavily on temporary workers to fill staffing gaps. Temporary workers may experience differences in job demands and resources compared with permanent workers, but this has been largely understudied.
Objective
To compare perceived job demands and resou...
This study investigates experiences of temporary work among care personnel in elder care. Semi-structured interviews were performed with fifteen temporarily employed care personnel in municipal nursing homes or home care and analysed using phenomenography. The informants' experiences of having temporary employment were characterised by either a sen...
Two key goals for sustainable spatial planning are to promote low-carbon travel in daily life and to enhance human wellbeing through diverse human-environment interactions. Yet, the integration of these goals has been underexplored. This study investigates the potential for experiential diversity via active travel in different residential contexts...
Background
This study documents and compares temporal patterns of physical behaviours, assessed using accelerometry, on working and non-working days among normal-weight (body mass index [BMI] < 25 kg/m ² ) and overweight (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m ² ) office workers who were either working exclusively at the office (WAO) or exclusively from home (WFH) during t...
Orthostatic hypotension (OH) is common in older people. We examined the influence of self-reported occupational-related physical activity (PA) and leisure-time physical exercise (PE) on orthostatic response in a sample of older people over a 2 year period. Supine and orthostatic systolic blood pressure (sBP), diastolic blood pressure (dBP), and mea...
Objective
We investigated and compared temporal sitting patterns among male and female hybrid office workers when working at the office (WAO), working from home (WFH), and for non-working days (NWD).
Methods
We analyzed data collected in 2020 among 165 hybrid office workers, carrying thigh-worn accelerometers for 938 days in total. Day type (WAO,...
Background
This study aimed to determine whether telework mismatch, i.e., lack of fit between actual and preferred extent of telework, is cross-sectionally and prospectively associated with well-being and burnout.
Methods
A questionnaire was sent to employees in a Swedish manufacturing company in November 2020 (baseline) and September 2021 (follow...
Objective
We investigated the extent to which ward-level leadership quality was associated with prospective low-back pain among eldercare workers, and how this association was mediated by observed resident handlings.
Methods
530 Danish eldercare workers, employed in 121 wards, distributed across 20 nursing homes were evaluated. At baseline, leader...
Flexible work arrangements (FWA) may be beneficial for increasing perceived flexibility (i.e. control over when, where and how to work) and reducing interference between work and private-life, but knowledge of gendered patterns of these relationships is sparse. Drawing on gender theory, the aim of this study was to conduct gender-differentiated ana...
Relocation to activity-based workplaces influences work environment satisfaction, but individual determinants of changes in satisfaction remain unknown. The aim of the present study was to determine whether age, gender, education, occupational position, or office type before relocation can predict work environment satisfaction among employees and m...
Work time control may offer opportunities, but also implies risks for employee recovery, influenced by increased work-related ICT use and overtime work. However, this risk-opportunity tradeoff remains understudied. This study aimed to test two different models of associations between work time control, work-related ICT use, overtime work, and the n...
Objectives
Physical and cognitive tasks occur together in many occupations. Previous reviews of combined tasks have mainly focused on their effects in a sports context. This review investigated to which extent combinations (concurrent or alternating) of occupationally relevant physical and cognitive tasks influence responses reflecting biomechanica...
Objective:
To determine to what extent pre-COVID-19 experience of telework was associated with perceived psychosocial working conditions (PWC; job demands, social support and influence at work) during the COVID-19 pandemic among white-collar workers in Sweden, and to determine to what extent the association depends on demographic factors, organiza...
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the physical behaviours of office workers worldwide, but studies comparing physical behaviours between countries with similar restrictions policies are rare. This study aimed to document and compare the 24-hour time-use compositions of physical behaviours among Brazilian and Swedish office workers on wo...
Tens of millions of workers in Europe work in office environments. Such a physical environment might seem fairly harmless compared to the exposures of many other work environments. Yet, the office design is associated with important occupational health-related outcomes, as demonstrated by increased sickness absence (1) and the risk of disability re...
Relocation to new office solutions such as activity-based workplaces (ABW) has increased but satisfaction with the ABW among employees varies, and the importance of participation in the relocation process is unclear. This study aimed to examine the association between employees’ extent of participation in the implementation process activities and s...
Background
Persistent or recurrent neck pain is associated with perturbations in the autonomic nervous system balance, and nociceptive stimulation has been seen to influence this balance. However, very few prospective studies have addressed the extent to which changes in pain associate with changes in autonomic cardiac regulation. Therefore, we inv...
Background
Sick leave due to musculoskeletal pain is common in the workforce. Time use in physical behaviors at work such as sitting, standing, low- (LIPA) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) may impact on sick leave due to pain. However, studies addressing this relationship using technical measures of physical behaviors are scarce. T...
Background
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many white-collar workers were requested to exclusively work from home (WFH), which may have affected their sedentary behavior. In Sweden, having less severe restrictions than many other countries, workers were allowed to alternate between WFH and work at the office (WAO), so called hybrid work. Understandin...
Background
In contrast to leisure time physical activity (LTPA), occupational physical activity (OPA) does not have similar beneficial health effects. These differential health effects, also known as the physical activity health paradox, might be explained by dissimilar effects of LTPA and OPA on cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF). This study aims to...
Background
‘Sit less-move more' has been a common advice to improve health of adults. Research indicates that this advice might be health enhancing among adults with sedentary occupations but not among adults with physically active occupations such as cleaners. This may be explained by the considerable differences in 24-h physical behaviors between...
There is strong and consistent evidence that leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) improves cardiovascular health and reduces the risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality. Less is known about health effects of occupational physical activity (OPA), and results are not in favor of a beneficial effect on cardiovascular health. Several large-scal...
Background
Physical activity is a key determinant for health and considered as an important factor in the prevention of lifestyle related-diseases. All physical activity domains are generally considered to be health enhancing. However, accumulating evidence in recent years suggests that occupational physical activity may not have the same beneficia...
Purpose
Eldercare work is characterised by high quantitative work demands and high occurrence of musculoskeletal pain and sickness absence. Our aim was to investigate the association between quantitative demands aggregated at the different organizational levels of eldercare and low back pain (LBP) and sickness absence due to pain among workers.
Me...
Introduction
Flexibility in working life, including non-standard employment (NSE) and flexible work arrangements (FWAs), offers the organisation a better ability to adapt to changing conditions while also posing considerable challenges for organisations as well as workers. The aim of the Flexible Work: Opportunity and Challenge (FLOC) study is to i...
Introduction:
Perceived quantitative demands at work have been associated with poor mental and physical health, long-term sickness absence and subsequent early retirement. Identifying modifiable determinants of perceived quantitative demands at different levels of the organization is key to developing effective interventions. The aim of the study...
Flexible work arrangements are common worldwide, but knowledge on how to achieve a sustainable work environment is sparse. The aim of this study was to use a participatory approach to identify concrete suggestions and key areas for improvement that were considered relevant, effective, and feasible for promoting good work environment and health at o...
Background
Persistent or recurrent neck pain is, together with other chronic conditions, suggested to be associated with disturbances of the Autonomic Nervous System. Acute effects on the Autonomic Nervous System, commonly measured using Heart Rate Variability, have been observed with manual therapy. This study aimed to investigate the effect on He...
“Sit less–move more” has been the univocal advice to adults for better health. Predominantly, this advice is based on research of physical behaviors during leisure-time. A recent study among > 100,000 adults indicates a u-shaped association between leisure-time physical activity and risk for cardiovascular disease and mortality among adults in phys...
Activity-based workplaces (ABW) have been implemented in many organizations to offer office flexibility and decrease facility costs. Evaluations of the ABW implementation process are rare. The study aimed to examine the ABW relocation process of two offices in a Swedish governmental agency and to explore factors that influence the implementation pr...
Objectives:
We aimed to identify eldercare wards with different types of resident handling characteristics ('phenotypes') and determine the prospective association between these characteristics and musculoskeletal pain and sickness absence among workers during a one-year follow-up.
Methods:
Our study was based on the DOSES cohort, including 467...
In occupational life, performing cognitive work tasks in between fatiguing physical work tasks may allow recovery and reduce stress without losing productive working time. The temporal pattern of such alternations is likely a determinant of the recovery effect, influencing both stress and fatigue; the difficulty of the cognitive task (CT) would als...
Objectives
Current knowledge on the determinants of step-rate at different organizational levels is limited. Thus, our aim was to identify, in eldercare, at what workplace level differences in step-rate occur and to identify determinants of workers’ step-rate at these levels.
Methods
Participants were 420 eldercare workers from 17 nursing homes (1...
Objectives:
Contrary to leisure-time physical activity, occupational physical activity (OPA) may have harmful health effects, called the physical activity paradox. A proposed mechanism is that OPA can elevate the heart rate (HR) for several hours per day. We aimed to investigate the association between the mean intensity of OPA and HR variability...
Intervention studies aiming at changing movement behavior have usually not accounted for the compositional nature of time-use data. Compositional data analysis (CoDA) has been suggested as a useful strategy for analyzing such data. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of two multi-component interventions on 24-h movement behavior (using...
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered national recommendations encouraging people to work from home (WFH), but the possible impact of WFH on physical behaviors is unknown. This study aimed to determine the extent to which the 24-h allocation of time to different physical behaviors changes between days working at the office (WAO) and days W...
We aimed to investigate the association between work-time compositions of physical behavior and sick leave trajectories due to musculoskeletal pain over one year. We conducted a secondary analysis using the data of 981 workers in a Danish prospective cohort (DPHACTO 2012–2014). At baseline, we assessed physical behaviors (sitting, standing, light p...
Activity-based workplaces (ABWs) are becoming popular in Western countries and were implemented at four office sites of a large Swedish government agency. A fifth office was used as a control group. The study aim was to examine the effects of relocation to ABW on perceived productivity among employees and to determine if perceived change-oriented l...
Background:
The autonomic nervous system interacts with the pain system. Knowledge on the effects of high velocity low amplitude spinal manipulations (SM) on autonomic activity and experimentally induced pain is limited. In particular, the effects of SM on autonomic activity and pain beyond the immediate post intervention period as well as the rel...
Distraction from the background environment while performing concentrationdemanding tasks is a common issue for office employees in shared work areas. However, few field studies have been conducted on the effects of different office types and work areas on objective measurements of cognitive performance. The first aim of the present field study was...
Alternating between physical and cognitive tasks has been proposed as an alternative in job rotation, allowing workers to recover from the physical work while still being productive. However, effects of such alternations on stress have not been investigated. This controlled experiment aimed at determining the extent to which stress-related response...
PurposeMulti-site musculoskeletal pain (MSP) is highly prevalent among eldercare workers, leading to increased incidence of sickness absence and early retirement. Most research on MSP in eldercare workers has focused on individual-level factors reported by the employees, with limited focus at the organisation and ward level. To address this gap, th...
Objectives:
High perceived physical exertion is common in eldercare workers and a strong predictor for impaired health. However, little is known on how physical behaviors at work associate with physical exertion in this group. The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which the composition of physical behaviors at work is associated wit...
Activity-based workplaces (ABWs) are implemented with possible implications for health, well-being, and work satisfaction in the workplace. Drawing on the theoretical framework, i.e., sense of coherence (SOC), the aim was to investigate how indicators pf SOC—meaningfulness, manageability and comprehensibility—are associated with, or function as bar...
Background:
Gendered patterns of physical activity behaviours may help explaining health inequalities between men and women. However, evidence on such patterns in the working population is sparse. This study aimed at documenting and comparing compositions of sitting, standing and moving at work and during leisure among male and female office worke...
Purpose
To explore the prospective association of objectively measured and self-reported occupational physical activity (OPA) with multisite musculoskeletal pain (MSP) among Danish eldercare workers.
Methods
The study population consisted of eldercare workers in 20 Danish nursing homes (N = 553, response rate 59%, 525 female). Baseline data were c...
Flexible work arrangements permitting workers to work anytime and anywhere are increasingly common. This flexibility can introduce both challenges and opportunities for the organisation, as well as for worker work-life balance (WLB). This cross-sectional study aimed to examine the extent to which occupational factors (organizational, leadership and...
Background/objectives:
An element of obesity prevention is increasing total physical activity energy expenditure. However, this approach does not incorporate the balance of various movement behaviors-physical activity, sedentary behaviors and sleep-across domains of the day. We aimed to identify time-use profiles over work and leisure, termed 'mov...
Objectives:
Previous research has shown strong associations between occupational physical activity (OPA) and need for recovery (NFR). However this research has only utilized self-reported measures of OPA which may be biased. Thus, there is a need for investigating if the previously documented association between self-reported OPA and NFR can be fo...
Purpose
This study aimed to identify sub-groups of workers with different trajectories of sick leave due to musculoskeletal pain over 1 year, and to investigate the extent to which the identified trajectories are associated with personal, occupational, lifestyle, and pain-related factors at baseline.
Methods
Data on 981 blue- and white-collar work...
This cross-sectional multilevel study aims at investigating the associations between psychosocial working conditions of different workplace levels and perceived physical exertion among eldercare workers. Data were obtained from the ‘Danish Observational Study of Eldercare work and musculoskeletal disorderS’ (DOSES) study, including 536 eldercare wo...
The aim was to describe occupational physical activity (OPA) and examine the role of psychosocial job resources among blue-collar workers. In a sample of 198 workers (57% male; mean age 44.9 (SD 9.9) year) from 7 companies in Denmark, two accelerometers (Actigraph) were placed on the thigh and trunk during 1-5 consecutive days, to determine working...
We developed and evaluated calibration models predicting objectively measured sitting, standing and walking time from self-reported data using a compositional data analysis (CoDA) approach. A total of 98 office workers (48 women) at the Swedish Transport Administration participated. At baseline and three-months follow-up, time spent sitting, standi...
When organizations adopt activity-based workplaces (ABWs), improved interaction is a common goal. Yet, few controlled longitudinal studies have been conducted on the effects of ABWs on interaction, social relations and work demands. The aim of this natural intervention study was to investigate the effects of moving into an ABW on satisfaction with...
In a context of job rotation, this study determined the extent to which the difficulty of a cognitive task (CT) interspersed between bouts of repetitive, low-intensity work (pipetting) influences recovery from fatigue.
Fifteen participants performed three experimental sessions, each comprising 10 repeats of a 7min +3min combination of pipetting and...
Objective Emerging evidence suggests that excessive sitting has negative health effects. However, this evidence largely relies on research using self-reported sitting time, which is known to be biased. To correct this bias, we aimed at developing a calibration model estimating "true" sitting from self-reported sitting. Methods Occupational sitting...
Background
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) interests many chiropractors and manual therapists, because joint manipulative techniques (JMT), e.g. high velocity low amplitude (HVLA) manipulations and mobilizations, appear to produce acute changes in ANS mediated physiology. The complexity of this issue justifies a systematic critical literature re...
Objectives
The study aimed to determine the extent to which latent trajectories of neck–shoulder pain (NSP) are associated with self-reported sick leave and work ability based on frequent repeated measures over 1 year in an occupational population.
Methods
This longitudinal study included 748 Danish workers (blue-collar, n=620; white collar, n=128...
Excessive sitting and standing are proposed risk factors for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), possibly due to autonomic imbalance. This study examines the association of objectively measured sitting and standing with nocturnal autonomic cardiac modulation. The cross-sectional study examined 490 blue-collar workers in three Danish occupational sector...
Background:
The prevention and rehabilitation of multisite musculoskeletal pain would benefit from studies aiming to understand its underlying mechanism. Autonomic imbalance is a suggested mechanism for multisite pain, but hardly been studied during normal daily living. Therefore, the aim of the study is to investigate the association between mult...
Activity-based offices are increasingly popular. However, productivity and well-being in these work environments have been little researched. The aims of this study were to quantitatively determine perception and use of the activity-based office environment in relation to self-rated productivity and well-being at work, and to identify important pre...