Abstract

Common health disorders such as back pain, heart problems and depression cause hardship to people and to their families. Such disorders are also a frequent cause of sickness absence (time away from work off sick), which may result in financial hardship, and significant periods of sickness absence can lead to long term impacts on employment, health and quality of life. Although there is a variety of support for workers on long-term sickness absence in many organisations through occupational health and employee assistance programmes, many of the interventions provided have limited evidence that they work.

This research seeks to develop a simple, low cost intervention which has the potential to be an effective and cost effective intervention among employees on long term sick absence, improving their well-being and encouraging return to work. Collaborative case management draws on current best practice in the management of a range of long-term conditions (such as depression and back pain) and has been proven effective in a number of randomised trials in a range of contexts and patient populations.

As collaborative case management in an occupational health context is a new and developing approach, we propose an initial 2 phase study:

In Phase 1 (development) we will work with stakeholders representing employees and employers to adapt the intervention to the UK context and to maximise acceptability and effectiveness.

In Phase 2 (internal pilot), we will assess intervention delivery and trial recruitment within an internal pilot randomized controlled trial. The collaborative case management intervention will be delivered in occupational health settings in a range of organisations. The intervention will be delivered by staff in existing employee assistance programs, who will be retrained to deliver the protocol with appropriate support and supervision.