In The Works
Tune in for regular updates on current IPW projects!
9/30/2025
A busy few months for IPW! The MOST study, an RO-1 with Harvard and Hennepin on work conditions and diagnostic accuracy, is proceeding! The Notification of Award (NOA) came from AHRQ for year two, special thanks to the Project Manager, Mike Wambua! Two additional RO-1’s are under review for randomized trials to reduce burnout among nurses with Dr. Carolyn Porta at the University of Minnesota. The EUREKA flourishing project R13 conference series is under review at AHRQ with Dr. Carolyn Audet at Vanderbilt as our project co-lead. Finally, a very large proposal was just submitted to the State of MN Dept of Health for the Rural Transformation Health Initiative.
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Conversations are happening surrounding partnerships with AI scribe groups, telehealth primary care group and national and international healthcare and non-healthcare worker organizations wishing to measure and improve worklife. An AI scribe measure of worklife and burnout is under development.
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There are several manuscripts in progress, including the PREVAIL paper on burnout across 6 continents, with a thematic analysis of common threads and differences to be performed by Dr. Erin Sullivan. The last few continents are steaming along to a wrap-up date in October. Drs. Linzer, LeClaire, and McKinney wrote a piece for the University of Pennsylvania LHS national newsletter on mechanisms of moral injury reduction within an LHS.​
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The Department of Medicine is funding two physicians, Anne Becker and Aaron Rutzick, to participate in the American College of Physicians (ACP) Physician Peer Coach Training program with Dr. Kerri Palamara starting in October. Dr. Becker hopes to use these skills to help colleagues navigate personal and professional goals,.
Additionally, Dr. Becker plans to use the coaching training in her role as director of the Hennepin Healthcare Early Career Development program, which includes two physician cohorts and one APP cohort. The two physician cohorts, including about 40 physicians from 14 different departments, starting meeting once a month in April of 2025. Objectives of the program include 1) Provide Support and Tools for Early Career Professional Growth, 2) Foster interdepartmental Community and Collaboration, 3) Enhance Well-Being and Resilience, 4) Promote Mentorship and Leadership Development, and 5) Cultivate Equity and Inclusion. A summary is pictured below!
7/31/2025
The Office of Professional Worklife worked with the Hennepin Healthcare Foundation Grants team to submit two grant proposals to the MN Department of Health. The first, if funded, will focus on workplace safety by addressing moral injury prevention in several Hennepin Healthcare clinics in partnership with colleagues at the University of MN Re LAB team. The second grant, again if funded, will focus on decreasing stigma related to mental health while increasing support for addressing mental health in the workplace. Both grants are made possible by the support for addressing both moral injury and mental health at Hennepin Healthcare and the dedication of team members who are involved in this work daily. Thank you all!​
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Check out our newly published paper: Learning Health System study designs for the evaluation of workforce interventions to cultivate eudaimonia (flourishing) - Cauley - Learning Health Systems - Wiley Online Library
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A photo from the Arena Labs meeting (pictured below) captured by Shane the Photographer!
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5/28/2025
The PREVAIL (preventing burnout globally) paper is in progress! In response to Health Affairs’ call for papers on the practice environment, contributors from around the world are drafting segments on burnout. Planning to submit this summer!
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IPW hosted the second Eureka conference (Dr. Linzer pictured left), continuing efforts to develop national agendas for burnout reduction research! A group of 21 scholars and thought leaders gathered in Minneapolis, Minnesota to share insights and create action plans.
Final documents are being processed for the AHRQ RO1 submission, UP-BEAT. This randomized trial will use real-time physiologic monitoring, in collaboration with Arena Labs in Nashville, to reduce burnout in nurses.
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Dr. Sullivan presented the talk, “The Burnout Equation: Evidence, Insights, and Practical Strategies for Supporting Healthcare Teams and Leaders,” to California AHEC!
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Catherine Justice and Iris Price presented “Strengthening healthcare workforce well-being through train-the-trainer burnout prevention and resilience program” at UCSF’s 2025 Rodnick Colloquium in San Francisco!
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Dr. Linzer and Dr. Sullivan contributed to a report published this month by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: “Job burnout: Consequences for individuals, organizations, and equity.”
3/31/2025
We received our final update on our MacArthur 100&Change Submission! PREVAIL will not be moving forward to the finals, but we scored in the top 8% of approximately 1000 submissions! We plan to pursue future MacArthur submissions and implement the feedback we received throughout this process.
Catherine Justice developed and recorded the “Compassion Fatigue” webinar. This will be shared with AHEC and be used as an additional module for the Train the Trainer curriculum!
Erin Sullivan was featured in Suffolk University’s series, “The On-Ramp,” discussing all things burnout. See below!
1/30/2025
Austin Health, Australia, held a successful wellbeing festival! The festival had a wonderful turnout, with 1200 people attending (over 1/3 of their rostered staff)!
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Catherine and Jordan visited Los Angeles and Fresno, California, to facilitate resiliency and burnout training workshops in person. Participants consisted of members of the second cohort of the Train the Trainer program, all workers for Federally Qualified Health Centers in California. Plans are "in the works" to continue spreading the program!
11/26/2024
Catherine Justice presented a poster on resilience at the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine (AIHM) conference in San Diego, California. She is pictured on the left!
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The PREVAIL proposal has advanced to the second round of reviews in the MacArthur 100&Change grant competition! In this round, Dr. Linzer was asked to review several other proposals as part of the “participatory review” process. The MacArthur senior leaders will rank these proposals over the coming months, and we will learn the final ranking of the project by March. Five finalists will be selected at that time. Fingers crossed!
Tricia Bolender helped author the paper, “Defining the Role of the Health Equity Officer: Guidance for Health Systems.” You can also view the press release here.
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Dr. Erin Sullivan was quoted in the Boston Globe! The article is titled, “What the rise of concierge medicine means for primary care doctors and patients.”
9/30/2024
IPW has many things to share that are “in the works” this month! To start off, Mark Linzer receives a prestigious award! He has been named the 2024 recipient of the Avedis Donabedian Healthcare Quality Award from the Medical Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Dr. Linzer will be present at the annual APHA meeting to receive his award and deliver the Donabedian lecture.
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Dr. Erin Sullivan completed an interview with Suffolk University of Boston on physician burnout in the United States healthcare system, referencing many of her publications.
Catherine Justice is presenting a poster for the abstract, “Healing from the Heart: Development and Testing of a Burnout Prevention and Resilience Curriculum for Health Professions Students, Residents, Clinicians, and Healthcare Workers in Medically Underserved Areas,” at the 2024 AIHM Conference in San Diego, California!
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Dr. Sanjoyita Mallick, 3rd year medical resident at HCMC, just published a paper in JAHA on work life and burnout in cardiology: “Work Environment, Burnout, and Intent to Leave Current Job Among Cardiologists and Cardiology Health Care Workers: Results from the National Coping with COVID Survey.”
7/30/2024
The paper, “Workplace factors related to health care leader well-being in rural settings” by Dr. Sullivan, was published! This week, she completed an interview on this paper with a rural magazine.
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The MacArthur 100&Change grant competition begins! Across the globe, IPW is “in the works” on a 100-million-dollar budget, a website, and a video proposal that are all due in September. The project is titled “PREVenting And extinguishIng burnout gLobally” (PREVAIL).
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5/29/2024
Dr. Sullivan is presenting at the 8th International Workshop on Insights in Organizational Justice and Behavior Ethics in Bordeaux, France at the end of this month. She is presenting a paper called, “Justice Conundrums and the Precipice of Moral Injury.”
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Catherine Justice is on the planning committee for the launch of two project ECHOs. Live activities in Trauma Informed Care & Health Equity and Integrative Pain Care will be offered to psychologists, physicians, and nurses for CE/CME credit starting June 2024. All are welcome to attend! They are implementing an “All Teach, All Learn” philosophy, which grants medical providers a safe space to learn from one another without pressure to be an expert in everything.
IPW was well represented at the EUREKA (Eliminating burnout through a Unified REsearch agenda: Knowledge to Action) meeting in Durham. Dr. Goelz, Stillman, Sullivan, Linzer, and many other scholars hatched the first phases of a national plan for burnout reduction. There are several papers and developments in process, as well as a first manuscript invited by a top management journal. A learning community of scholars will keep the conversation and development going.
3/27/2024
IPW work is moving into new and exciting areas, including challenges and opportunities for rural healthcare leaders, and exploring new dimensions of burnout. This development is being led by Dr. Sullivan, an IPW member at Harvard and Suffolk Universities.
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Dr. Linzer and Dr. Sullivan are planning to host a national conference series starting at Duke University! The goal of this AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) funded grant is to develop a research agenda for burnout reduction. The conference will take place on April 8th.
The abstract, Rural Health Leader Burnout: Prevalence, Cause, & Implications, was accepted for a session at the National Rural Health Association in May 2024. Dr. Sullivan is co-presenting with rural partners, The objectives of the abstract are to understand rural healthcare leader burnout, assess the work-related factors contributing to rural healthcare leader burnout, and identify potential strategies and solutions to improve leader well-being.
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Additionally, IPW's very own Catherine Justice is planning to present at the Unite Scientific Nursing Conference in Munich Germany on April 23rd! She will be giving a keynote on Tributaries of Resilience: Navigating Healthcare Burnout, Wellbeing, and System Change.
1/30/2024
Catherine Justice and Jordan McWilliams travelled for the Train the Trainer program!
Catherine led two resiliency and burnout training workshops, one in San Francisco and one in Los Angeles, for Federally Qualified Health Centers across California. This retreat allowed them to meet and work with their first cohort in person.
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Jordan and Catherine are looking forward to the continued development of their resiliency training materials and working with future cohorts.
