Steffen Torp

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of South-Eastern Norway

The United Nations declares that the global degradation of ecosystems represents a danger to human health. Deterioration of forests is one of several threats against the natural systems. The aim of this exploratory study was to investigate people’s experiences with clear-cutting and how it had affected their health and well-being. Qualitative data...

Background: Physical therapists play a vital role in the Norwegian health care system, and their work environment may be a significant determinant for their wellbeing and job performance. Objective: 1) Assess differences in work environment, mental health problems, and work engagement between physical therapists working in specialist versus muni...

Purpose Studies on the work integration of persons with disabilities (PwD) and the role of social dialogue therein are scarce. The study examines how the different systems of workers’ representation and industrial relations in Slovakia and Norway facilitate PwD work integration. Taking a social ecosystem perspective, we acknowledge the role of vari...

The Norwegian Armed Forces have not achieved their aim of employing 20% women in military positions. Work engagement is emphasized as an important factor for preventing employees to quit work. The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate which factors Norwegian female officers in the Norwegian Army highlight as important for their work enga...

Innledning: Den norske arbeidslivs-og velferdsmodellen har bidratt til å skape et samfunn med høy inntekt per innbygger, relativt små sosiale forskjeller, god folkehelse og mye tillit. Hoveddel: Basert på omfattende forskningslitteratur trekker vi ut det vi oppfatter som kjernen i det som ofte refereres til som den norske arbeidslivs-og velferdsmod...

Det norske Forsvaret har ikke klart å oppnå målsettingen om at 20% av yrkesmilitære skal være kvinner. Jobbengasjement fremheves i litteraturen som en viktig faktor for å klare å beholde ansatte i virksomheter. Målsettingen med denne kvalitative studien var å belyse hvilke faktorer norske kvinnelige offiserer fremhever som viktige for sitt jobbenga...

Background Sense of coherence (SOC) is a global orientation to life that may affect a person’s way of acting and living within his or her life context, which can have an impact on general and oral health. The aims of this study were (i) to describe the distribution of SOC in a general adult population; (ii) to explore whether sociodemographic chara...

Aim To determine antecedents and outcomes of work engagement (WE) among nursing staff in long‐term care (LTC) using the Job Demand‐Resources model. Design A systematic review following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis statement and Synthesis Without Meta‐analysis in systematic reviews guideline. A study protoco...

Gjennom den norske velferdsstaten har offentlige myndigheter tatt ansvar for borgernes liv og velferd. Skole og utdanning er garantert for den enkelte, og om man blir syk, trenger hjelp eller på annen måte ikke klarer seg selv, er risikoen for den enkelte redusert. Alle borgere er garantert goder, tjenester og en viss trygghet gjennom det sikkerhet...

Gjennom den norske velferdsstaten har offentlige myndigheter tatt ansvar for borgernes liv og velferd. Skole og utdanning er garantert for den enkelte, og om man blir syk, trenger hjelp eller på annen måte ikke klarer seg selv, er risikoen for den enkelte redusert. Alle borgere er garantert goder, tjenester og en viss trygghet gjennom det sikkerhet...

Gjennom den norske velferdsstaten har offentlige myndigheter tatt ansvar for borgernes liv og velferd. Skole og utdanning er garantert for den enkelte, og om man blir syk, trenger hjelp eller på annen måte ikke klarer seg selv, er risikoen for den enkelte redusert. Alle borgere er garantert goder, tjenester og en viss trygghet gjennom det sikkerhet...

Gjennom den norske velferdsstaten har offentlige myndigheter tatt ansvar for borgernes liv og velferd. Skole og utdanning er garantert for den enkelte, og om man blir syk, trenger hjelp eller på annen måte ikke klarer seg selv, er risikoen for den enkelte redusert. Alle borgere er garantert goder, tjenester og en viss trygghet gjennom det sikkerhet...

Background Working environment, work engagement and health among occupational and physical therapists in Norway have rarely been investigated. Objectives (1) To compare the psychosocial working environment, work engagement and mental health problems of occupational therapists with those of physical therapists; (2) to compare the same measures amon...

Background: Assuring high-quality, person-centred practice in long-term care organisations requires attention to the wellbeing of the staff who deliver it – a factor sometimes overlooked amid the increasing challenges such organisations confront internationally. Research has shown that job demands and job resources are distinct aspects of the worki...

Aim To explore leaders’ perceptions and experiences of facilitators and barriers for successful workplace inclusion of immigrants, unemployed youths, and people who are outside the labor market due to health issues. Methods Semi-structured individual interviews with 16 leaders who actively engaged in inclusion work, representing different occupati...

Background. Many cancer survivors experience late effects of cancer treatment and therefore struggle to return to work. Norway provides rehabilitation programs to increase labor force participation for cancer survivors after treatment. However, the extent to which such programs affect labor force participation has not been appropriately assessed. T...

Background: To provide high-quality and cost-effective person-centred care, organisations need employees who are committed to perform at their best. Employee work engagement, defined as a positive, fulfilling approach to work, is known to correlate favourably with employee wellbeing and performance and with the service climate. Extended understandi...

Background The Nordic countries are welfare states that also have been claimed to be in the forefront in developing health promotion, in relation to theory, research, policy and practice. This scoping review was performed by members of the Nordic Health Promotion Research Network with the objectives to collect and identify the scope and theoretical...

I denne kvalitative studien undersøkes hvordan masteroppgavene kan bidra til kunnskapsbasen i helsefremmende arbeid. Studien er basert på en gjennomgang av masteroppgaver i helsefremmende arbeid fra perioden 2008 – 2018 ved ett universitet i Norge, samt et fokusgruppeintervju med den akademiske faggruppen tilknyttet dette masterstudiet. Data er ana...

Few studies have investigated the support needed or received by self-employed cancer survivors to continue working. In Norway, the Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) is responsible for supporting people both practically and financially to continue or return to work following ill health. Social welfare counsellors (NAV counsellors) are responsi...

Zhrnutie zistení projektu na Slovensku a v Nórsku Stredoeurópsky inštitút pre výskum práce (CELSI) Inštitút pre dobre spravovanú spoločnosť (SGI) University of SouthEastern Norway (USN) Autorský kolektív: Holubová, B., Kahancová, M., Kováčová, L., Mýtna Kureková, L., Sedláková, M., Šumichrast, A., Torp, S. Projekt ´Chcem pracovať, kto mi pomôže. Po...

This scoping review was commenced as a collaboration within the Nordic Health Promotion Research Network (NHPRN). The overall aim was to explore how research under the label 'health promotion' was undertaken in a Nordic context. The search for dissertations published in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden was limited to the years 2008 to 2...

The Nordic countries are among the world's leading countries in international rankings on prosperity, productivity, social equity, trust, and health. Such positive results may be linked to how these countries have organized their working life. The aim of this article is to describe core elements of the Nordic working life model (emphasizing Norway)...

We highlight and analyze an important channel for redistribution of income in the Nordic countries, often underemphasized in the scholarly literature that analyze the relationship between income equality and public health. We show how coordinated wage bargaining and solidaristic wage policy lead to wage compression, and thereby to low market income...

OPEN ACCESS Aims: Our aim was to investigate labor-force participation, working hours, job changes, and education over 9 years among persons who have survived more than 10 years after cancer, and compare it to controls. Methods: Register data on 2629 persons who survived cancer were stratified by gender and compared to data on 5258 matched contr...

Background: Global health is a term often used interchangeably with international health due to overlapping similarities and unclear distinctions. While some international health supporters argue that global health as a field is unnecessary as it is simply a duplicate of international health, global health supporters argue that global health is un...

Purpose Almost half of people diagnosed with cancer are working age. Survivors have increased risk of unemployment, but little is known about long-term work retention. This systematic review and meta-analysis assessed work retention and associated factors in long-term cancer survivors. Methods We searched Medline/Pubmed, Embase, PsychINFO, and CIN...

Purpose The proportion of self-employed people in the workforce is growing. However, most research on work participation among cancer survivors has focused on salaried workers. We aimed to explore how self-employed people experience work during and after cancer treatment. Methods In this qualitative study, we conducted semi-structured interviews wi...

Purpose This study explored employer’s perspectives on (1) their experience of good practice related to workers diagnosed with cancer and their return to work (RTW), and (2) their perceived needs necessary to achieve good practice as reported by employers from nine separate countries. Methods Twenty-five semi-structured interviews were held in eig...

Background Due to improved cancer treatment, the survival rate of cancer is increasing Unfortunately, many cancer survivors suffer from serious late effects because of this treatment. Therefore, more and more cancer survivors with reduced work ability are, and will in the future be, in work. To include this group of workers in working life is a cha...

Background: Almost a third of employed individuals of working age fall out of work after cancer treatment. Aim: To explore cancer survivors’ successful return to work, focusing on assets and resources utilized to resolve cancer- and work-related obstacles to achieve long-term employment. Methods: We interviewed eight cancer survivors who had remain...

Purpose To describe: (i) patterns of self-employment and social welfare provisions for self-employed and salaried workers in several European countries; (ii) work-related outcomes after cancer in self-employed people and to compare these with the work-related outcomes of salaried survivors within each sample; and (iii) work-related outcomes for sel...

Because of governance and management changes in universities in recent decades, the working environment of university academics has changed. The objectives of this cross-sectional study were to investigate whether university academics are more workaholic and report more work–family conflicts than other university personnel and to provide empirical...

Purpose: We investigated persons who survived cancer (PSC) and their experiences in returning to sustainable work. Methods: Videotaped, qualitative, in-depth interviews with previous cancer patients were analyzed directly using "Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis" (IPA). Four men and four women aged 42-59 years participated. Mean time sinc...

Introduction Studies on cancer survivors’ (CS) return to work (RTW) after cancer have mostly focused on salaried workers. RTW among self-employed CS has almost not been focused although there are big differences in these two groups’ working conditions and social welfare provisions. The aim of this study is therefore to bring together data from mult...

Purpose: Radiation protection regulations emphasize the importance of knowledge as a preventive factor in radiation safety. Employees occupationally exposed to ionizing radiation in hospitals are required to possess adequate competence regarding radiation protection and possible health hazards from radiation exposure. Besides, knowledge may prevent...

Background: Norway is internationally known today for its political and socio-economic prioritization of equity. The 2012 Public Health Act (PHA) aimed to further equity in the domain of health by addressing the social gradient in health. The PHA’s main policy measures were (1) delegation to the municipal level of responsibility for identifying and...

Aims: The gradient in health inequalities reflects a relationship between health and social circumstance, demonstrating that health worsens as you move down the socio-economic scale. For more than a decade, the Norwegian National government has developed policies to reduce social inequalities in health by levelling the social gradient. The adoptio...

The severity of illness in psychiatry is rated using the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scale. The GAF scale is often used in both research settings and in the clinic. The scale ranges from 1 to 100 and is subdivided into ten 10-point intervals, each with verbal rating instructions called anchor points and examples. GAF is an instrument tha...

Self-employment—the so-called flexible layer of the economy—has gained importance following the 2007–2008 global economic and financial crisis. In Europe, the self-employed now comprise on average 15% of workers [Eurostat, Labour market and Labour force survey (LFS) statistics, 2016]. Around one-third of self-employed people also provide jobs for o...

Background Economic crises and unemployment have profound impact on mental health and well-being. Main goal of the Healthy Employment (HE) project is to enhance intersectoral actions promoting mental health among unemployed, namely through the implementation and effectiveness-evaluation of short-term and sustainable group interventions. Methods Th...

Whole-system approaches linking workplace health promotion to the development of a sustainable working life have been advocated. The aim of this scoping review was to map out if and how whole-system approaches to workplace health promotion with a focus on management, leadership, and economic efficiency have been used in Nordic health promotion rese...

PurposeThe aim of this study is to investigate whether salaried and self-employed workers differ regarding factors relevant for return to work after being diagnosed with cancer. The possible mediators of an effect of self-employment on work ability were also investigated. MethodsA total of 1115 cancer survivors (1027 salaried and 88 self-employed)...

Aims: The aims of this study were to examine subjective health complaints among Norwegian adolescents and assess the development of gender differences in subjective health complaints between age 14 and 16; to investigate whether self-esteem, stress from schoolwork or body dissatisfaction affected adolescents' subjective health complaints; and dete...

https://bestprac.no/er-selvstendig-naeringsdrivende-en-oversett-gruppe-arbeidsrettet-rehabilitering-etter-kreft/

Work is both detrimental and health promoting. Antonovsky accentuated the distinction between eliminating stressors and developing health-enhancing job characteristics. He elaborated on job characteristics that potentially relate to a sense of coherence, offering a dense description of a workplace where individuals experience meaningfulness, manage...

https://bestprac.no/?s=steffen+torp

The aim of this study was to investigate which work factors researchers in the institute sector consider important for their well-being and presence at work. We interviewed eight researchers in depth regarding work, well-being, and presence at work. By use of content analysis, we identified five main themes associated with well-being and presence a...

Worldwide, inequalities in health are increasing, even in well-developed welfare states such as Norway, which in 2012, saw a new public health act take effect that enshrined equity in health as national policy and devolved to municipalities' responsibility to act on the social determinants of health. The act deems governance structures and "Health...

https://bestprac.no/hoyt-sykefravaer-blant-norske-sysselsatte-som-har-vaert-behandlet-for-kreft/

The public health coordinator (PHC) is a municipal-government position in Norway whose role is to organise and oversee municipal policies and functions to support national public health goals. This cross-sectional study investigates conditions associated with use of PHCs by Norwegian municipalities in the period immediately before the new Public He...

Bakgrunn: Mellomledere opplever ofte høyt arbeidspress med forventninger om å ivareta både ansattes behov og virksomhetens krav til produktivitet og fortjeneste. Dette kan føre til stress og helseplager. Hensikten med denne studien var å undersøke hvordan psykososiale arbeidsmiljøfaktorer og mestringsforventning påvirker mentale plager og jobbengas...

The aims of this scoping review of research on workplace health promotion interventions in the Nordic countries were to investigate: how the studies defined health; whether the studies intended to change the workplace itself (the settings approach); and whether the research focus regarding their definitions of health and use of settings approaches...

Objective: To provide empirical knowledge about the antecedents and outcomes of workaholism among municipal middle managers within the framework of the job demands-resources model. Methods: We used a self-administered questionnaire to collect cross-sectional data (n = 118) on job demands, job resources, work engagement, workaholism, and mental h...

https://sykepleien.no/sites/sykepleien.no/files/electronic-issues/articles/14kr1_kreft_foreldre_barn_2939.pdf

http://socialmedicinsktidskrift.se/index.php/smt/article/view/1051/866

http://fysioterapeuten.no/Fag-og-vitenskap/Fagartikler/Ansatte-som-arbeider-med-personer-med-psykisk-utviklingshemming-God-ledelse-og-fagutvikling-fremmer-arbeidsevne

This multi-municipal intervention study explored whether informal carers of frail older people and disabled children living at home made use of information and communication technology (ICT) to gain knowledge about caring and to form informal support networks, thereby improving their health. Seventy-nine informal carers accessed web-based informati...

The aim of this study was to investigate the financial effects of cancer on families in which a parent has cancer and lives with his/her children, to identify financial hardship risk factors, and to describe the children’s experiences regarding the impact of cancer on their socioeconomic situation. A mixed-methods research approach was applied. Nor...

The aims of this study were to observe the sick leave rates of cancer survivors for five consecutive years following a first lifetime diagnosis of invasive cancer and to identify socio-demographic and clinical predictors of sick leave taken in the fifth year after diagnosis. This registry study comprised 2,008 Norwegian individuals (18-61 years old...

The objectives of this study were to investigate whether psychological job demands, personal control and social support affect the negative health measure of depression differently than the positive measure of work engagement and to investigate whether work engagement mediates the effects of job demands and resources on the level of depression. We...

Aims: To follow the employment status of 5-year cancer survivors for 5 years after diagnosis with their first lifetime invasive cancer and to identify socio-demographic, work-related and cancer-related predictors of employment status after 5 years. Methods: This prospective registry study concerned all 3278 people in Norway (18-61 years old) dia...

The objective of this cross-sectional questionnaire study was to investi-gate work factors influencing work engagement and health of industrial workers (N = 121). The Survey for Workplace Health Promotion (SHE-FA) was used to collect data on background information, job demands (quantitative and qualitative demands, and role conflict), job resources...

This study was conducted to determine how many cancer survivors (CSs) make worksite adjustments and what kinds of adjustments they make. Changes in work ability among employed CSs were explored, and clinical, sociodemographic, and work-related factors associated with the current total work ability were studied. CSs of the ten most common invasive t...

Workplace health promotion may include approaches focusing on behavioral change among employees and approaches with a holistic system-oriented thinking aiming at changing the physical, social and organizational factors of a setting. This literature review aimed to identify studies on workplace health promotion in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finl...

Sick-leave after primary cancer treatment has hardly been studied. This study compares Norwegian cancer patients (CPs) with shorter (≤8 months) and longer (≥9 months) sick-leave after primary cancer treatment. Our aim was to characterize factors associated with these two types of sick-leave in order to identify possible factors for interventions by...

To investigate how cancer survivors (CSs) experience the cancer-related support they get at the workplace, the proportion of CSs who change work due to cancer and the sociodemographic and work-related factors associated with CSs' work changes. CSs of the 10 most common invasive types of cancer for men and women in Norway completed a mailed question...

Background and aims: Parental involvement in NICUs has become increasingly common. In Family Focused Care (FFC) intervention programmes, parents are encouraged to reside in the NICU together with their newborns, taking a more active part in the daily care. The aim of this study was to assess the impact from FFC on parental confidence and breastfeed...

Most research on workplace health promotion has focused on modifying lifestyles and preventing disease, and not so much on how the workplace itself affects positive health measures. This cross-sectional study investigated the relationships between psychosocial work factors and psychiatric nurses' health, measured as generalised self-efficacy, carin...

http://fysioterapeuten.no/Fag-og-vitenskap/Fagartikler/Haelsofraemjande-arbetsplatser-ett-nytt-perspektiv-foer-fysioterapeuter

This study investigated the relationships between workers' compliance with health and safety (H&S) routines and instructions adopted in the company (dependent variable) and psychological demands, decision authority, social support, management support, unionization and H&S management system (independent variables). A cross-sectional questionnaire st...

The objective of this controlled intervention study was to investigate the effects of a 2-year training program in health and safety (H&S) management for managers at small- and medium-sized companies. A total of 113 managers of motor vehicle repair garages participated in the training and another 113 garage managers served as a comparison group. Th...

http://www.fafo.no/media/com_netsukii/20089.pdf

The objective of this pilot Norwegian intervention study was to explore whether use of information and communication technology (ICT) by informal carers of frail elderly people living at home would enable them to gain more knowledge about chronic illness, caring and coping, establish an informal support network and reduce stress and related mental...