Documents Apostolopoulos, Yorghos 2 results

"Long-haul truck drivers in North America function in a work context marked by excess physical and psychological workload, erratic schedules, disrupted sleep patterns, extreme time pressures, and these factors' far-reaching consequences. These work-induced stressors are connected with excess risk for cardiometabolic disease, certain cancers, and musculoskeletal and sleep disorders, as well as highway crashes, which in turn exert enormous financial burdens on trucking and warehousing companies, governments and healthcare systems, along with working people within the sector. This article: 1) delineates the unique work environment of long-haul truckers, describing their work characteristics and duties; (2) discusses the health hazards of long-haul trucking that impact drivers, the general population, and trucking enterprises, examining how this work context induces, sustains, and exacerbates these hazards; and (3) proposes comprehensive, multi-level strategies with potential to protect and promote the health, safety, and well-being of truckers, while reducing adverse consequences for companies and highway safety."

"U.S. commercial drivers are entrenched in a stressogenic profession, and exposures to endemic chronic stressors shape drivers' behavioral and psychosocial responses and induce profound health and safety disparities. To gain a complete understanding of how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect commercial driver stress, health, and safety over time, and to mitigate these impacts, research and prevention efforts must be grounded in theoretical perspectives that contextualize these impacts within the chronic stressors already endemic to profession, the historical and ongoing forces that have induced them, and the potentially reinforcing nature of the resulting afflictions."