The Airwave Health Monitoring Study (AHMS). An Occupational Cohort Study of the British Police Forces.

Police officers are among one of the occupational groups presenting with higher rates of ill health compared to other workers and are exposed to a wide range of chemical, physical and psychosocial risk factors that can affect their health and performance at work. This raises questions about how the risk factors they face at work affects their performance and ultimately their wellbeing and safety, as well as the safety of the public. Recent staff surveys and literature have indicated that mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression, are also a particular concern. Understanding these hazards and risks to police officer health and putting tailored safety and health promotion measures in place is an obvious solution. However, there is a lack of detailed information on the specific factors involved and the how these, individually or in combination, affect health. It is also likely that health outcomes vary according to workplace factors (e.g. region, rank, hours worked) but also vary according to individual make-up and sociodemographic characteristics. Therefore, understanding and quantifying risk factors to police officer health may impact on the health and wellbeing of the individual, their colleagues and families as well as on the health of the public. The Airwave Health Monitoring Study (AHMS) was established to evaluate possible health risks associated with the use of the digital communication system used by the police forces and other emergency services. It is a large (over 50,000 participants) long-term study investigating the health of police officers and staff across Great Britain. Currently, follow-up measures are being undertaken in England only. Our objectives are both to extend the follow-up of the AHMS to Scotland and Wales, and to provide a resource for studying how gender, lifestyle, and occupational exposures interact with genetic and metabolic factors in relation to physical and mental health, in a comparatively young working population with a high representation of men. Specifically we plan to: i) follow-up the Scottish and Welsh AHMS participants who attended a baseline clinical assessment (N = 13,681) approximately 7.5 years later; ii) develop a method to estimate exposures to a range of chemical, physical and psychosocial risk factors to health by combining group level data through a bespoke Job Exposure Matrix (JEM) and individual level data to refine and evaluate JEM performance. iii) use mental health as an exemplar case study to examine the relationships between work-related risk factors and mental health difficulties, and identify the individual and/or workplace 'protective' factors that promote wellbeing within the workplace. Our proposal has high policy relevance at the level of both government and employers. It represents a novel, cross-sectoral collaboration between academics across five UK leading universities and in partnership with police forces and the Police Federation (representing rank and file officers) across Great Britain. The application has wide support from our stakeholders who have been included in the project from the outset in order to ensure that the findings are translated into interventions that impact on health and wellbeing.