Background

Alicia Dugan, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the UConn School of Medicine, whose research is centered around the field of occupational health psychology, with a focus on worker stress and health.

Her work focuses on examining sources of stress in the workplace, and what can happen when additional personal stress comes into play. Dugan applies participatory action research and community-based participatory research methods in her work, actively engaging workers in the design of workplace interventions to uncover the root causes of health issues and identify priority areas for action.

Dugan received her undergraduate degree in psychology and then earned her first Master’s degree in counseling psychology. Upon completing her Master’s, she became a licensed mental health counselor and held various roles in the mental health field, eventually transitioning to employee assistance programs (EAPs). While working in EAPs, Dugan was exposed to the reality of what goes on behind the scenes in workplaces, as well as how personal circumstances can affect employees. “I began to wonder: wouldn’t it be more effective for employers to preventatively address the root causes of poor mental health through organizational changes, rather than sending workers to counseling one by one after the harm has already been done?” Dugan says. Lacking training in interventions beyond the individual level, she decided to go back to school and receive both her second Master’s and PhD in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from UConn.

Dugan was mainly motivated to pursue her line of work out of her interest in helping others to reduce stress and improve well-being. In her case, this involved researching how work factors impact peoples’ lives. “After all, most adults spend more time working than on any other activity except sleeping, so it is important to achieve an optimal work-life balance,” she says. Dugan firmly believes that in order to achieve a good quality of life, one must have a good quality of working life. “Work takes up so much of a person’s time and energy, so a good work environment is a crucial determinant of overall health and well-being.”

Involvement with CSCH

Dugan was drawn to join the Collaboratory as an affiliate because of its strong emphasis on improving the health and well-being of not only children, but also those who serve them, like teachers. Much of Dugan’s career has been focused on worker health and stress across many occupations, although in recent years she became particularly drawn to focusing her research on public school teachers, since they were at high risk for burnout. “When your job is to work with people in any kind of service occupation, you are always at risk for burnout, and we were seeing that teachers were increasingly at risk, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Dugan. Dugan also appreciates the Collaboratory’s focus on the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model, because it is a systems framework and one of its components is focused on school staff well-being. She believes that it is crucial to support teachers, since it is becoming more and more difficult to recruit new people into the teaching profession due to the stresses that they face.

Dugan is currently working on a project called the Total Teacher Health Project with Principal Investigator Dr. Jennifer Cavallari (UConn School of Medicine). Co-Investigator Dr. Lisa Sanetti (Neag School of Education) was also a Co-Investigator until her recent death. The project, funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, is focused on teacher mental health and involves the research team conducting an epidemiological study, as well as an intervention study – developing, implementing, and evaluating interventions within six Connecticut elementary schools. The study aims to assess teacher mental health over time, examining relevant job-related variables such as work overload, time pressure, and student behaviors, and how each variable may affect teacher well-being. The project then invites teachers to participate in generating solutions to these job-related challenges, and also reaches out to school administrators to involve them in implementing some of these suggested changes. The main goal is to examine whether implementing these participatory interventions change teachers’ mental health outcomes and quality of work life.

Fun Facts

Early on in her work life, Dr. Dugan received professional training and a state license in cosmetology, working for two years as a manicurist in a Boston day spa.

Undergraduate Researcher Elena Roberts interviewed Alicia Dugan and wrote this profile.