Also, percentage reduction associated with seat belts applied to baseline injury rate
Abbreviation: NIOSH, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; OSHA, Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Step 2a involved estimating the injury rate or injury cost rate in the population to which the prevention was applied. Note that the injury case studies did not focus on measuring exposure as the illness case studies did. The illness case studies focused on exposure to a single substance or to a single source of harmful substances that is considered to be the main illness risk, and this exposure could be measured quantitatively by a single, continuous variable. In the injury case studies, the source of injury risk is not reducible to a single exposure, and usually includes many factors related to equipment, work environment, workload, materials, management, worker behavior, and a host of specific circumstances. As a result, the risk of injury is usually defined by the rate of injury outcomes for workers in a particular task or occupation—that is, the rate of injury or the rate of cost for injury, per worker and per unit of time. In two of the three injury case studies, it was possible to estimate the rate of injury or injury cost in the relevant population, although using different strategies to do so.
In the safety grants case study, the cost of injuries was estimated for the population of workers affected by the grants. While the workers’ compensation insurer could estimate this number using grant program records, it would be available with a time lag. Therefore, RAND used a simple approximation instead. First, they calculated the share of the safety grant worker population in the state’s total insured population. Then, they applied this share to the state’s total workers’ compensation claim costs and derived an estimate of the workers’ compensation claim costs attributable to the workers benefiting from the safety grants.
In the ambulance redesign case study, RAND extracted the number of injuries and the distribution of their severity levels from a national database based on police reports. This was straightforward, but the data was quite unstable from year to year for unknown reasons. Another drawback to this data was that it did not include injuries caused by hard braking or sudden acceleration events that were not associated with crashes. Those injuries were also a target of the design improvements. In addition, urban and rural rates were tabulated separately, because the rate of adoption of the design improvements was very different in these areas.
The amputations case study was the most difficult, and it did not yield economic benefit estimates. One reason was that data on injury rates and injury costs were not available for the inspected workplaces where amputations had occurred.
Step2b required an estimate of prevention effectiveness in reducing injuries or injury costs. This step was unique to the injury case studies, but it is analogous to the step in the illness case studies in which prevention effectiveness in reducing exposures was estimated. As for other steps, there were important differences among injury case studies in the strategies needed to complete this step.
In the safety grants case study, the NIOSH study of prevention measure effectiveness that was the subject of the case study had already provided such estimates.
In the ambulance redesign case study, constructing credible prevention effectiveness estimates was the biggest challenge. There was no data demonstrating the effectiveness of the redesigned ambulances in the field, and there were many engineering improvements made. Each of the improvements was tested in controlled conditions, but those tests did not yield any overall measure of effectiveness in preventing injuries. However, the tests used to evaluate the new designs used equipment and standards that were meant to be equal to or surpass those that had already been used to upgrade safety in other vehicles and occupant positions. Based on this, the new injury rates and severity levels were assumed equal to those for passengers and drivers who had already benefited from analogous improvements. Thus, the injury rates for these other passengers and drivers were extracted from the police report data. Two other groups were taken to represent the new improved safety levels achieved for ambulance patient compartment occupants: back-seat passengers of automobiles, and drivers of ambulances. In addition, the safety belt effectiveness literature based on observed results of seat belt use in other settings was used for a third estimate of projected percentage declines in injury rates, because passenger restraints were central to the ambulance improvements.
As mentioned, the amputations case study did not produce benefit estimates. Again, data were not available on pre- or post-inspection injury rates, and even if they were, RAND did not have a valid comparison group. Such a group could theoretically be constructed through randomizing the choice of amputation workplaces to inspect and comparing subsequent injury rates, but any such experiment would be problematic in the context of an enforcement program.
The amputations case study did demonstrate that the inspections targeted by information on amputations yielded a greater number of violations and greater total fines. However, RAND could not assume that inspection effectiveness was proportional to violations or fines. There is some literature on effectiveness of OSHA inspections on reducing injuries, but these studies have not provided quantitative estimates of the effectiveness of finding more violations per inspection. 36 – 38
In Step 2c, the last step in Table 3 , calculation of the reduction in injuries and injury costs, was straightforward, requiring only the estimates made in the previous two steps.
In the previous section, we saw that there was a general difference in the methods used in the illness and injury case studies, but variation within these two groups of cases in the strategies used to follow these methods. When it comes to assigning values to prevented injuries and illnesses, there is more commonality between illness and injury cases, but we will note some differences in data availability and requirements.
As mentioned above, where possible, we used two methods for assigning dollar values to prevented injuries and illnesses in each case study: WTP and the sum of medical costs and productivity losses. For fatal injuries and illnesses, the WTP method uses relatively consistent, value of a statistical life (VSL) estimates that are usually applied to all deaths equally, regardless of age or other circumstance. This makes these estimates simple to use. RAND used a VSL value from Viscusi and Aldy (2003) 39 expressed in 2016 dollars (9.5 million) or 2018 dollars (10.0 million) for most case studies, but a value of 10.7 million in 2018 dollars taken from the National Safety Council 40 for the ambulance safety case study.
Unlike values for VSL, WTP values for averting nonfatal cases of illness and injury are different for each illness or for each injury severity level, and there is no single set of widely accepted values. In the asphalt milling case study, RAND followed OSHA in using a low-end estimate of $68,000, a high-end estimate of $5.5 million, and a midpoint estimate of $2.8 million for the value of averting a nonfatal illness. In the firefighter cancer case study, RAND did not report separate values for nonfatal and fatal cases, but noted that their high and low estimates of total WTP benefits (nonfatal and fatal combined) varied by a factor of 2.3 depending on the assumption about WTP values for morbidity. In the PDM case study, a variety of sources were used for WTP estimates to avert nonfatal illness. The least severe form of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (CWP 1+) was assigned a value of $71,000 for lost workday injuries; the next most severe form (CWP 2+) was assigned a value of $490,000 for chronic bronchitis from an Environmental Protection Agency publication, 41 and values for progressive massive fibrosis (PMF) and COPD were assigned values using estimates assembled for the most recent coal dust rule, which were derived from two cited publications. 42 , 43 These values averaged 36% of the value of averting death, so that figure was used to arrive at an estimate of $3.6 million for PMF and COPD. In the ambulance redesign case study, estimates of WTP values for nonfatal injuries of different severity levels were taken from a publication of the National Safety Council (2017). 44
In the safety grants case study, no attempt was made to estimate WTP to avert nonfatal injuries, due in part to the fact that injury rate reductions were not estimated in that case study. Instead, cost reductions (medical costs and productivity losses) resulting from the prevention measure were estimated directly.
Success in estimating medical costs and productivity losses of illnesses was mixed. Medical costs of cancer cases are available in more detail than other conditions. Only for cancer are there readily available estimates for how annual healthcare costs change over time from year of diagnosis to death, which allows proper discounting of future cost savings. For other illnesses, typically only average annual costs across all illness stages are available. In the asphalt milling case study, medical costs for fatal cancer cases but not for fatal cases of PMF or nonmalignant respiratory disease (NMRD) were estimated. In the firefighter cancer case study, different forms of cancer were the only illnesses, so medical cost data was available. In the PDM case study, average annual medical costs for CWP and COPD were each available from specialized published studies or tabulations, and these were combined with estimates of years of treatment based on assumptions about average age at diagnosis and lifespan. Medical costs associated with the broad category of deaths due to NMRD were calculated from results of a well-known study by Leigh (2011) of total US costs of occupational injury and illness. 30
Productivity losses due to illness can be divided into those that occur due to early death, and those that occur before death due to loss of employment, absenteeism, and loss of ability to do household work. Those that are due to early death are most easily estimated, based on published tables giving average earnings and household work values for men and women by age. 45 While these are not specific to people working in different occupations, they can be adjusted for the average income of the relevant occupational group, as they were in the asphalt milling and PDM case studies. Productivity costs incurred before death are more difficult to estimate. In the PDM case study, RAND followed Leigh (2011) 30 by multiplying productivity costs due to early death due to NMRD by a ratio of pre- to post-death productivity costs for fatal cases estimated in an early, foundational study of costs of occupational injury and illness by Rice et al. (1985) 29 Productivity losses associated with nonfatal cases of CWP, PMF, and COPD were based directly on estimates in Leigh (2011). 30 Similar methods were used for productivity costs associated with fatal lung cancer in the asphalt milling and firefighter cancer case studies.
When injuries result in fatalities, their productivity costs can be estimated based on age at death, just as they are for deaths due to illness. Their medical costs can be estimated using workers’ compensation records. However, the share of fatal injuries in total injuries is small, so estimating the cost of nonfatal injuries is particularly important. The safety grants case study only involved nonfatal injuries. The medical costs and productivity losses associated with these injuries were estimated using data on costs of workers’ compensation claims, whose benefits are intended to pay for all medical care for work injuries and replace a certain percentage of lost earnings (indemnity benefits). However, available claim cost information does not typically include administrative costs for delivering these benefits, which are substantial. Only a few estimates of these costs are available, contributing to uncertainty in the RAND estimates. More important is the fact that indemnity benefits may not be a good indicator of loss of earnings if these losses go beyond the loss of wages recorded for the claim. RAND provided one estimate of total lost earnings based on the formulas for determining percent of wages replaced by benefits and another much higher estimate based on an estimate of income losses over 10 years following work injury claims that was published for New Mexico. 46 In the ambulance redesign case study, medical costs and productivity losses associated with crashes were derived from National Safety Council (2017) 44 estimates of total crash costs, inclusive of property damage, medical costs, productivity losses, and administrative costs. Estimates were published both with and without injuries, with the difference being attributed by RAND to injury costs. Note that property damages are not usually included in cost of injury estimates. Though they might be relevant to other injury prevention measures, they do not apply in this situation, because the prevention measures were designed to reduce the injury consequences of crashes, but not crash events.
The previous steps constructed an estimate of the value of observed or projected illness and injury reductions. But the degree to which NIOSH is responsible for these reductions needs to be assessed. In each of the six case studies, this assessment was done based on whether there were any other known research efforts that could have produced similar technology or information, and whether it was reasonable to assume that the prevention activities that led to the reductions would have happened in the absence of NIOSH. From a short-run perspective, the answers were generally clear. In the asphalt milling, PDM, and ambulance redesign case studies, no one else other than NIOSH and its partners was doing similar research, and the illness reductions depended upon the new technologies created.
In the firefighter cancer case study, when NIOSH began its work, there was already concern in the firefighting community that firefighting exposures may be leading to higher cancer rates. In addition, there were a number of small US studies that supported this idea, as well as three notable large-scale studies in other countries emerging in the same general time period. But there was no consensus about whether firefighter exposures were causing higher cancer rates. Industry experts indicated that it was clearly the NIOSH cancer study, using rigorous methods and a large sample of US firefighters, that crystallized a new consensus about the dangers of firefighter exposures and led very quickly to a nationwide shift in attitudes that drove efforts to implement a common set of prevention measures.
In the safety grants case study, the expansion of the grant program occurred very quickly after the preliminary results became known and was directly driven by those results, according to the program’s administrator. The Michigan amputation surveillance system created with NIOSH support was clearly dependent on NIOSH funding and led directly to targeting some OSHA inspections with information that was not otherwise available.
Because NIOSH research was indispensable for realizing illness and injury reductions, all of these reductions could be counted as benefits of NIOSH research. But over the long run, it is less likely that at least some reductions would not have occurred by other means. To take account of this possibility, longer time-range counterfactual scenarios were constructed and used for two of the case studies—asphalt milling and safety grants case studies. A counterfactual scenario projects what might have happened, or might happen in the future, if NIOSH had not acted. This step can be critical to both illness and injury case studies.
Both the asphalt milling and safety grants case studies used a simple form of counterfactual—an assumption that the same outcomes would have been achieved without NIOSH, but with a delay. This type of counterfactual essentially modifies the baseline injury or illness trend to which the post-NIOSH trend is compared. For asphalt milling, the counterfactual was that engineering controls would have been developed in Europe and then introduced widely in the United States 15 years later. There were some known research efforts in Europe, although they had not translated into practice. This counterfactual results in somewhat less than half of the estimated benefits without the counterfactual. In the safety grants case study, the program’s administrator estimated that its success might have otherwise become known 5 years later and then expanded, just as it was following the NIOSH research.
Other case studies did not include a long time-range counter-factual, although they could have. For example, just before NIOSH began its study of cancer among firefighters, the National League of Cities stated in 2009 47 that there was a lack of evidence to confirm or deny the link between firefighting and cancer, but there was already widespread concern in the firefighting community about potential cancer risks. There were also several related important studies in other countries and there could have been additional studies in the absence of NIOSH. Therefore, it could be straightforward to apply a delayed firefighter protection counterfactual to the RAND study and derive lower, alternative benefit estimates, as was done in the asphalt milling case study. We note, however, that while possible future impacts of foreign studies in the United States were not taken into account, neither were the positive impacts of NIOSH studies on the rest of the world.
Although counterfactuals are speculative, they can have a large impact on estimated benefits. Thus, they need to be constructed based on known facts, and be perceived as reasonable. Knowledge of international developments is sometimes critical to project the future, and the asphalt milling and firefighter cancer cases are good examples.
Scenarios that reach decades into the future are subject to large uncertainties, including the difficulty of foreseeing technological change. Automation may greatly reduce the need for some current jobs. Changes in materials, sources of energy, or means of delivering products and services could substantially reduce or increase the hazards to which workers are exposed, without any change in level of attention to safety and health. For example, it is not hard to imagine that the need for asphalt pavement milling and coal mining could change in unexpected ways in the future, or that the means of emergency medical transport or the techniques of firefighting might be subject to large changes. While detailed speculation about the distant future might not be productive, it could be worth noting signs of the general direction of future trends.
In all six case studies, the NIOSH contribution was not the only one that was necessary to achieve the outcome. Some of the major contributions from other stakeholders are summarized in Table 4 . We note that counterfactual analyses of the contributions of these other stakeholders could reasonably conclude that they also were responsible for the outcome.
Contributions of nonemployer stakeholders
Asphalt milling | Coal miner PDM |
---|---|
Critical roles of milling machine manufacturers in designing and implementing control, and OSHA in motivating control development and use through silica rule | Some of original impetus for development came from outside NIOSH; and industry, labor, and MSHA contributed to development and testing. Implementation required in new MSHA rule |
Firefighter cancer | Ambulance redesign |
Critical roles of firefighter industry and worker representative organizations in developing and promoting recommendations based on NIOSH findings | Large number of public and private partners contributed to design development, and standard setting organizations adopted standards |
Safety grants | Amputations |
Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation proactive in seeking program evaluation and supported NIOSH evaluation in kind | OSHA used the amputation information to target workplace inspections |
A full cost–benefit analysis would include all parties who incurred costs to bring about the result. In such a framework, total costs could be compared to total benefits, and there would be no need for the benefits to be allocated to various contributors. Obtaining information on all of the costs of other parties involved in research, dissemination, and implementation would present challenges that were not addressed in the RAND case studies, especially because these costs are incurred by numerous parties and may not all be recorded as separately identifiable expenditures of time and funds.
5.1 |. factors contributing to feasibility of rand case study benefit estimates.
To assess the extent to which we can more widely apply the approach RAND used to estimate economic benefits of NIOSH research, we need to understand how several factors were critical to the feasibility of the six case studies described. Some of these factors were present to some degree in all case studies, and some were important in only a subset.
The first factor is the presence of a clear link between NIOSH research and subsequent prevention implementation in the workplace. This link was key to the selection of the case studies, although RAND had to clarify and confirm it. For example, in some instances, NIOSH created new technology that was not available elsewhere, and in others, the expert informants stated that NIOSH research had initiated prevention activities, and the timing of events supported this.
The second factor was the presence of government regulation, which typically requires universal implementation of certain prevention measures in a well-defined population. This enabled specification of the timing and extent of prevention implementation. The establishment of regulations based on exposure limits also requires a formal risk assessment, which provides needed information on the relationship between reduction in exposure and reduction in number of illnesses. In the ambulance redesign case study, regulation took the form of establishment of purchasing specification standards by the states, so the risk assessments that are part of the traditional federal regulatory process were not available.
The third factor was the presence of a strong network of industry and labor organizations. The firefighter cancer case study did not involve regulation, but a fairly standard set of recommendations was disseminated very widely in the firefighting community, with most departments voluntarily deciding to implement them. This appears to be the result of a very strong network of active organizations that shares and improves techniques and knowledge of a wide variety of firefighting subjects, as well as a national firefighter community that has been organized to address health issues.
A fourth factor was the focus on prevention measures embodied in technologies that, once installed, either automatically or typically lead to risk reduction. The simplest case study was asphalt milling, where the technology was built into the milling machines. The ambulance redesign case study also centered on a technology improvement, but was more complicated, with multiple engineering control improvements and a reliance on workers to adopt a new habit of using restraints. The firefighter cancer case study was centered more on changed practices than new technology, but the effectiveness of the techniques and equipment that were recommended could still be tested and measured, and this informed expert judgments upon which the analysis relied. In the PDM case study, the effectiveness of prevention depended upon miners responding to the dust levels the PDM displayed. Still, this single technology was a clear marker of implementation. Using small numbers of miners, additional NIOSH research verified that miner actions to reduce exposure did indeed flow from use of the technology. 48
A fifth factor in some of the case studies was implementation of the prevention measure in a well-defined group. This factor was sometimes present due to regulatory requirements as mentioned above, either directly or indirectly. Without a well-defined population, it is harder to quantify the number of workers targeted and the extent to which the prevention measure was implemented. For example, it was harder to define the number of those working with large asphalt milling machines than the number of miners using PDMs. In the firefighter case study, the extent of prevention implementation in the relevant population was uncertain, but professional firefighters were a well-defined group of known size. In the safety grant case study, the group benefiting from prevention was not defined by occupation or task, but it was clearly identified, because the prevention measures were funded and documented on the individual employer level by a government program. The previously mentioned small case studies from the Institute for Work and Health of Ontario also provide an illustration of how frequently government program administration can be a key to defining target worker groups. Only five of their 42 published case studies were designated as documenting benefits (“societal outcomes”) such as cost reductions, shortened time away from work, or injury and illness reductions, and all of these focused on outcomes for populations served by a public workers’ compensation insurance agency. 4
A sixth factor in most of the case studies was that the prevention measures assessed were not implemented together with other prevention measures targeting the same risks. This made it easier to measure their impact. For example, the PDMs were just one part of a new rule that enforced lower exposure standards and made inspection protocols more rigorous. Only because use of PDMs was required 6 months earlier than the other parts of the rule was the data able to show the separate effect of the PDMs.
Seventh and finally, case studies were facilitated by the availability of data on exposures in the post-prevention period, as in the PDM case study, or of data on post-prevention injury rates, as in the safety grant case study, which used state workers’ compensation claims data. In the ambulance redesign case study, data was not available for the post-prevention period. However, data was available from police reports on the rates of crash injuries for vehicles and vehicle occupant positions that had previously met the engineering test standards used by the ambulance redesign effort.
The case studies conducted by RAND were selected largely because of their feasibility, but the challenges encountered suggest some potential avenues for increasing the feasibility of economic benefit assessment for a wider range of research efforts.
One way to increase capacity to measure the economic benefits of research would be to establish more formal support or processes for gathering information on the long-term impacts of research. This might not only support additional quantitative estimates of impacts, but also offer insights into how these impacts could be increased in the future. Currently, it remains hard to track the transfer of occupational safety and health research to practice by others, including regulatory agencies and the private sector. The transfer often takes place many years after the research is completed and researchers have shifted their attention to other projects. While researchers may learn, through their networks, about uses of their research by others, more focused efforts may be needed to gather information through literature searches, communications with key government and private employer contacts, or surveys of workers and employers.
Another way to increase capacity to measure benefits with economic metrics would be to improve baseline estimates of excess risk or exposure. This information provides a foundation for measuring the benefits that added prevention may bring. Establishing such baseline estimates in some of the RAND case studies was challenging, so other potential case studies may pose similar challenges. For example, baseline measurements of exposures to silica in asphalt milling dust were available, but they were few, and only from some regions of the country. In the ambulance redesign case study, there were no statistics readily available on the excess number of injuries occurring in the rear patient compartment, or their severity distribution, so estimating this baseline risk of injury became a central challenge of that case study. While estimating baseline excess risk and exposure is one of the basic functions of occupational safety and health surveillance, given limited resources, surveillance often focuses on numbers and rates of injury and illness outcomes rather than the hazards and exposures that may cause them. Illness and injury outcome information is often reasonably viewed as the highest priority and is generally easier and less expensive to collect. In contrast, exposure assessment efforts typically require labor intensive involvement of highly trained personnel or specialized surveys. Developing methods of prevention and providing implementation guidance is a higher priority than gathering representative baseline risk and exposure information. And, unlike in some of the RAND case studies, there are typically already several prevention methods in place to varying degrees among many employers, so determining the overall baseline requires more information about both risks and mitigation measures in a wider range of workplaces.
One of the ways that NIOSH research may have an impact is by producing information that can lead to better targeted OSHA inspections. We saw this in the amputation surveillance case study. This was also true in a NIOSH research effort that was considered, but not selected as a subject of a RAND case study. NIOSH researched the rates and causes of carpal tunnel syndrome among poultry processing workers. The main identified impact of that activity was establishment of regional special emphasis programs at OSHA for poultry processors. In both of these examples, measuring the impact of NIOSH research requires knowledge of the impact of OSHA inspections and assistance to employers. Some studies of the impact of OSHA inspections compare employers who received inspections to those who did not 36 , 38 but since improving the targeting of inspections generally has no effect on the total number of inspections completed, these studies cannot be directly used. There are other studies providing strong evidence that inspections with penalties reduce injuries more than those without, 37 but we really need quantitative estimates of the impact of shifting inspection resources from employers with lower hazard levels (fewer violations) to those with higher hazard levels (more violations). Research to generate such estimates could thus provide a necessary support for benefit estimates of some NIOSH research.
Identifying and further developing a set of standard values of averting nonfatal injuries and illnesses would also facilitate the measurement of economic benefits. Valuation of fatality reductions is relatively straightforward, because it employs a single standard value applicable to all types of fatalities called the VSL. While the standard value used varies somewhat across federal agencies, there is a single value mandated for use by the Department of Health and Human Services. 49 It would help, however, to have standard information on distribution of age at death for various conditions to compute lost productivity associated with death, as well as standard estimates of medical costs by cause of death. The larger challenge is with respect to nonfatal cases, where WTP estimates vary quite widely, as noted by RAND. Medical costs are well-known for major types of cancer since the National Cancer Institute compiles information on costs of medical care over time from year of diagnosis to year of death. 50 This time path of costs enables proper calculation of the present value of medical costs based on discounting. However, this information is not usually available for other illnesses. Information on average annual medical costs per illness case have been obtained from sources such as the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), or might be obtained somewhat less comprehensively from commercial medical claims databases. However, this information is usually developed based on research efforts focused on one or a small number of conditions and is not available for many conditions. The same may be said of information on the productivity costs of medical conditions for which MEPS is again the leading source of data. We note that the need for this information is not specific to the occupational safety and health community, so it would make sense to support a broader effort to further develop and keep updated a basic set of cost estimates.
Another way to support expanded use of benefit measurement is to use the RAND case study experience to guide smaller scale, internal benefit assessments by NIOSH personnel. RAND assisted NIOSH by using complex quantitative analysis skills, and an independent perspective on evaluation standards and methods. In addition, the completion of the six case studies has also made it much clearer what the general steps in conducting such an analysis need to be. However, in the process of developing a menu of potential case studies and identifying the basic methods and data available to carry them out, NIOSH also found that the general scale of benefits could be estimated in rough but useful form with a relatively small investment of time and budget. To be sure, any smaller scale, less fully developed analysis may reach conclusions that are less exact and certain. But if they were constructed with full transparency, they might be used as a reasonable basis of assessment of research results, and would still represent a valuable addition to current measures of impact. Part of the economy achieved by this approach would be due to the fact that, even with RAND’s expertise and extensive efforts, a lot of the assembly of data and preliminary search for potential estimation strategies had to be carried out by NIOSH personnel.
While the RAND case studies did not attempt to estimate the total cost of the prevention measures that lead to the measured benefits, it would be desirable to pursue this in the future, to assemble complete, cost and benefit assessments. One means of obtaining cost information would be to build into NIOSH research projects, where appropriate, an objective of collecting information from research subjects and partners on their expenditures of time, resources, and funds to implement recommended prevention measures. This information might be collected in the course of collecting other information, and in the context of working relationships established for the research process. Assistance from personnel with specialized experience in cost analysis may be needed. While the information collected would not necessarily be representative of all workplaces for relevant occupations and industries, it would be likely to yield information on the general scale of costs per workplace and protected worker, so that a range of values for national costs could be constructed.
NIOSH engages in a wide variety of activities, many of which present much greater challenges to estimating economic benefits than did the RAND case studies. Examples include many epidemiological studies, occupational health surveillance, training for workers and managers, prevention recommendations, and laboratory and field methods for measuring exposure.
Most epidemiological studies do not immediately lead to an industrywide campaign to implement a new set of prevention recommendations as they did in the firefighter cancer case study. More typically, epidemiological findings tend to accumulate over time and gradually lead to actions in workplaces, many of which are voluntary and unrecorded in publicly available data.
Much the same can be said about surveillance information, which may point in a general way to industries and occupations or other broad groups of workers with elevated rates of certain injuries or illnesses. Such data do not often represent a wholly new understanding of risks and needed prevention measures, or the only impetus for progress in prevention.
Training for workers and managers on how to identify certain risks and mitigate them is also difficult to evaluate. Typically, post-training surveys are used to obtain participant reactions to the training and retention of its main messages. But it is difficult to measure training’s impact on subsequent prevention practices and results, especially over the long term. The outcomes of training can be enormously varied, and it is difficult to isolate the impact of a specific training on subsequent actions when there are other sources of information and safety initiatives that are also important.
A major responsibility of NIOSH is to provide prevention recommendations that are made freely available for voluntary use. But it is often difficult or impossible to know who is accessing and acting on those recommendations. The number of downloads and requests can often be recorded, but there is usually no practical system for determining their use or even gathering reports about their usefulness.
Developing and disseminating standard methods of exposure measurement is one of the infrastructural science responsibilities of NIOSH, but tracing out their influence on subsequent investigations and research, on subsequent prevention recommendations and on workplace prevention appears daunting. It may be better to regard such activities as overhead costs of other activities that are closer to practical application. In other words, rather than attempting to isolate their benefits, perhaps it should be acknowledged that their benefits will be part of the benefits attributed to other applied research efforts that use the measurement standards, and that the cost of developing the measurement standards should therefore be added to the total cost of those other efforts.
So what may be done in situations where economic measurement of benefits appears daunting? One response is to say that “partial assessment” of benefits can be useful, even if it cannot deliver bottom-line benefit estimates. This might particularly apply to prevention recommendations. As the RAND case studies demonstrate, the greatest benefits are achieved when the population addressed is large, when the baseline risk is high, and when the relevant prevention measures are effective. If these parameters are available, and if the lower level of risk with the recommended prevention measures in place can be estimated, then the potential number of illnesses or injuries averted can be estimated. Such estimates, along with attention to available information on the proportion of relevant employers that may have been reached through dissemination efforts, could help to measure relative potential for impact among NIOSH efforts devoted to providing guidance. Measurement of risk levels subsequent to dissemination of NIOSH research results could also help retrospectively to define the upper limit of the value of safety and health improvements for which NIOSH may have been responsible.
When safety and health improvements are observed following dissemination of NIOSH information, it is usually difficult to determine the degree to which the information was responsible. NIOSH has conducted surveys to determine the overall frequency with which professional, trade, and labor organizations rely upon and further disseminate information from NIOSH. 51 , 52 In contrast, instead of focusing on rates of dissemination and use of information, a case study approach could focus on a specific set of workplace safety and health improvements for an industry and work backward to gain insight into how those improvements were made by interviewing a sample of the employers responsible for them. Researchers could attempt to determine the motivating factors behind the specific safety and health improvements and then to determine the sources of information that may have been critical for supporting the improvements. These critical information sources could then be examined to assess the extent to which they may have been directly or indirectly based on NIOSH research. This could require some tracing of information as it gets picked up and repackaged by disseminating parties in government, industry, and worker organization networks.
The RAND case study results are a validation of the basic approach NIOSH uses to guide and select research proposals for funding within and outside NIOSH: the Burden, Need, and Impact (BNI) framework. 53 In this framework, project proposals are assessed on (1) magnitude of burden, as indicated by the size of the worker population they address, and the rate and severity of outcomes associated with the hazards they address, (2) the need for the particular research approach and resulting information as indicated by the demand of stakeholders for the information to be produced and their willingness to support the research, as well as by identified gaps in the safety and health literature, and (3) the potential for impact in terms of the effectiveness of relevant prevention measures and the prospect for wide dissemination and adoption of those measures. The factors that lead to success and relatively large benefits in the RAND case studies are well represented in these BNI categories.
If the RAND case studies represent some of NIOSH’s most successful research efforts, then they also point to the effectiveness of not only having stakeholder support but having stakeholders in the industry who are both research collaborators and direct users of the resulting information. And they highlight the value of stakeholders who can enforce or have an unusual capacity for promoting industrywide use of the results. This provides some insight into the factors that contribute to successful research translation, which is the focus of a recently established program at NIOSH. They also illustrate that the research knowledge being translated into prevention does not always consist of new prevention measures or guidance. It may also be new knowledge of risk levels as in the firefighter cancer case study, or about the effectiveness of already existing prevention measures as in the safety grants case study, or about the location of known risk types as in the amputation surveillance case study.
Another perspective on strategic and project planning can be gained by noting that some of the basic parameters of BNI were not necessarily available when the research that was the subject of the RAND case studies was begun. For example, in the asphalt milling case studies, there was little knowledge of the size of the population addressed by the research. RAND had to estimate it and find relevant information within the cost–benefit analyses done for OSHA. In the firefighter cancer case study, it was unknown whether any excess risk of cancer would be found, and it if had not been, it could not have led to the major results observed. In the ambulance redesign case study, there was no quantitative knowledge of the existing burden of injuries, though there were reasons to believe it was significant. In the safety grants and amputation surveillance case studies, the effectiveness of the resulting prevention measures was unknown until quantified by the NIOSH research that was the subject of the case studies. This points up the fact that research often needs to be undertaken without basic knowledge that allows prediction of its effects. However, a quantitative range of potential benefits might still have been possible to develop and might have strengthened the original research proposals.
We noted that there have been few attempts to date to measure the societal benefits of research with economic metrics, and none that require the same combination of methods as the NIOSH-sponsored RAND case studies. The NIOSH case studies required linking of specific research efforts to specific actions by others (employers), quantitatively measuring the extent of those actions and their impact on specific health outcomes, assessing the extent to which those actions might have occurred without research, and assigning dollar values to specific health outcomes. The experience gained through this combination of challenges may help point the way forward to realizing the widely shared goal of measuring research benefits, particularly health-related research supported by the public sector. The feasibility of quantitatively measuring benefits of NIOSH research with economic metrics has been demonstrated in several instances in which the impact of NIOSH research was already recognized in a qualitative sense and data availability was particularly favorable. Some additional NIOSH research efforts of this type can be identified, and there are ways that application of the same methods might be extended to other NIOSH research efforts that appear more difficult to assess. Such applications could be useful for making benefits more concrete to NIOSH’s funders and stakeholders, and to workers, employers, and its own staff, and for helping to assess the value of continuing investment in NIOSH research. The experience of these six case studies provides a set of general methods to follow but demonstrates that additional applications are likely also to require creativity in seeking out new data sources and expert informants, as well as means of analysis that overcome data limitations. In addition, we should recognize that a number of NIOSH responsibilities, such as providing prevention guidance, training occupational safety and health specialists, conducting surveillance of injury and illness patterns, producing epidemiological evidence for occupational risks, and establishing exposure measurement standards will often lead to benefits that are quite difficult to measure. For these critical activities, only partial steps toward quantification of benefits might still yield ranges of potential impact magnitudes and assist in judging results and setting priorities. Further, attempting quantification of benefits can help to document how impacts were achieved, even when it does not reach a bottom-line benefit estimate. The difficulties of applying these methods to situations in which there is no available mechanism to track, compel, or strongly incentivize prevention implementation also suggests that some effort might be directed to focused investigation of the sources of information that have played major roles in instances of notable improvements in safety and health and the part that NIOSH research may have played, either directly or indirectly.
The authors report that there was no funding source for the work that resulted in the article or the preparation of the article.
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
DISCLOSURE BY AJIM EDITOR OF RECORD
John Meyer declares that he has no conflict of interest in the review and publication decision regarding this article.
ETHICS APPROVAL AND INFORMED CONSENT
No ethics review nor informed consent was required as no human subjects research was involved.
The findings and conclusions in this report of the authors do not necessarily represent the views of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the US Department of Health and Human Services.
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Occupational h&s practices research.
Find evidence-based tools and current research initiatives focused on the study of OHS Practices
The Occupational Health and Safety Act sets out the rights and duties of all parties in the workplace, as well as the procedures for dealing with workplace hazards and for enforcement as needed. All workplace parties have a responsibility for promoting health and safety in the workplace and a role to play to help the workplace be in compliance with the statutory requirements set out under the Act1.
This section offers evidences based research tools and resources to help employers enhance their occupational health and safety practices to prevent injuries in the workplace and meet the OHSA guidelines.
1 Guide to the Occupational Health and Safety Act
Systematic literature review on the effects of occupational safety & health.
The aim of this review was to assess whether OHS legislative and regulatory policy could improve the working environment in terms of reduced levels of industrial injuries and fatalities, musculoskeletal disorders, worker complaints, sick leave, and adverse occupational exposures. . Jun 10, 2019
Does ageing have a preventive or an aggravating effect on occupational health and safety (OHS)? How do the potential moderators of measurement of accidents, gender, occupation and cut-off age influence the relationship between ageing and OHS? Read this study for a meta-analysis of evidence. Jan 22, 2019
Researchers at the Institute for Work and Health conducted a research study to analyze the trends of workplace violence for men and women in Ontario. This progressive study outlines findings from both claims data and hospital records. Sep 26, 2018
WSPS is partnering with a research team from Ryerson University interested in understanding the safety climate at food processing facilities. The goal of the study is to better understand why the food processing sector faces challenges with respect to compliance with the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act. Sep 26, 2018
WSPS recently supported a research team at the Institute for Work and Health, who have found that modifying an OHS training program have a positive impact on the learning capability of workers. They have outlined the 12 step process in this guide for any organization to easily embed essential skills into their OHS Training. May 16, 2018
With support from WSPS, researchers at Ryerson University conducted a study to uncover the occupational health and safety issues in food processing facilities. After a survey of 127 managers and coordinators, the analysis indicated that there were key concerns in relation to occupational and safety. Overall, the top three OHS concerns indicated by all respondents were: 1) manual material handling; 2) slips, trips and falls; and 3) energized equipment. Mar 28, 2018
Researchers at the Institute for Work and Health have developed a computer software that allows organizations to conduct economic evaluations. The Health & Safety Smart Planner is a software tool designed to calculate the costs and benefits of workplace health and safety initiatives, as well as the costs of health and safety incidents. Mar 28, 2018
Over the last 5 years, WSPS partnered with the Institute for Work and Health, and the Ontario prevention system to develop an 8-item assessment tool that can be used to evaluate occupational health and safety performance. The tool has since been validate to acutely predict performance in companies that participated in the project. It has also been adopted by New Brunswick as the provincial OHS performance metric. Learn more by reading the WSPS Network News article Assess your OHS performance in just 5 minutes or visit the IWH Organizational Performance Metric (IWH-OPM) project page. Mar 01, 2018
With the pending federal legislation to legalize recreational cannabis across Canada it is imperative for employers to understand the impact this will have on the health and safety of employees. WSPS is collaborating with the Institute for Work and Health (IWH) on a research project that will offer better understanding of current workplace consumption patterns, perceptions of the impact of cannabis on OHS, workplace social norms around cannabis, and perceptions around employee rights to use cannabis. Mar 01, 2018
The Centre for Research Excellence in Occupational Disease (CREOD) has been gathering evidence to get a better understanding of the role, structure, resources and functioning of Joint Health and Safety Committees (JHSCs). Available is the self-assessment tool for JHSCs to generate feedback on committee processes and be a mechanism for enhancing communication and consensus with regards to its performance. Mar 01, 2018
With support from WSPS, the Institute for Work and Health (IWH) has developed the OHS Vulnerability Measure. This tool measures the extent to which workers may be vulnerable to occupational health and safety risks at work. Read more on the Institute for Work & Health website. Mar 01, 2018
The Ontario Leading Indicator Project was conducted from 2011-2014 between WSPS, the Ontario health and safety associations (HSA's) and Institute for Work and Health (IWH). This project aimed to identify organizational and management measures that can be used as indicators to predict future health and safety performance. Over 1,200 WSPS firms have participated in this project, helping to develop and benchmark leading indicators for the prevention of workplace injuries and illnesses. Learn more by visiting the WSPS & the Ontario Leading Indicators Project or the IWH Ontario Leading Indicators Project (OLIP). Feb 28, 2018
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Armin, Hossein, et al. "Assessment and Ranking of Occupational Health and Safety Risks in the Machinery Maintenance Unit of Dam Construction Projects Using the Combined Approach of Methods (Fmea and Fuzzy Topsis)." International journal of health sciences , vol. 6, no. S7, 2022, pp. 5710-5723, doi: 10.53730/ijhs.v6nS7.13386 .
A dam construction project is exposed to various risks due to the amount of investment, duration of implementation, the complexity of design and implementation, etc., and these risks will lead to human and financial losses. Thus, based on three principles, including (i) time, (ii) quality, and (iii) cost, identifying, assessing, ranking risks, and Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) can have a significant impact on project objectives. The machinery maintenance unit has the largest share of the organization's cost model. Manpower, tools, spare parts, and working standards of planning and scheduling are the most important elements of the implementation of the maintenance process in these organizations. Methodology In the present research, first, all the failure modes of the machinery maintenance unit were identified. Then, to assess and rank them, in addition to the three traditional attributes in Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) (severity-S, occurrence-O, and detection-D) and calculate the Risk Priority Number (RPN), we used fuzzy numbers corresponding to real-world problems instead of crisp numbers for risk ranking.
What you will learn
Identify common workplace hazards and risks., develop and implement ohs policies and procedures., conduct effective risk assessments., investigate accidents and incidents., implement emergency response plans., promote a safety culture within the organization..
Why take this course?
This course provides a comprehensive overview of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) principles and their critical role in safeguarding workplaces. Participants will gain a solid understanding of the fundamental concepts, legal framework, and the profound impact of OHS on both individuals and organizations.
The course commences with a clear definition of OHS, delineating its scope and objectives. It delves into the intricate legal and regulatory landscape governing occupational health and safety, emphasizing the importance of compliance. Participants will explore the multifaceted benefits of a robust OHS culture, including enhanced employee morale, reduced accidents, and improved organizational reputation.
A key focus of the course is on the human element of OHS. It underscores the significance of safeguarding workers’ physical and mental well-being, highlighting the potential consequences of workplace hazards and the devastating impact of occupational injuries and illnesses. Participants will learn how OHS contributes to creating a positive and supportive work environment, fostering employee engagement and productivity.
Furthermore, the course emphasizes the economic implications of OHS. It explores how effective OHS management can lead to cost savings through reduced accidents, workers’ compensation claims, and absenteeism. Additionally, it highlights the role of OHS in enhancing organizational performance and competitiveness.
By the end of this course, participants will have a strong foundation in OHS principles and their practical application. They will be equipped to identify potential hazards, assess risks, and contribute to the development and implementation of effective OHS programs. This knowledge will empower them to create safer and healthier workplaces for themselves and their colleagues.
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Athletic training echo to prevent heat-related athlete collapses and enhance safety measures.
Thursday, August 29, 2024
Media Contact: Sydney Trainor | Communications and Media Relations Specialist | 405-744-9782 | [email protected]
As the school year starts, so do sports activities at all levels, from elementary school to college. With increased activity and severe temperatures, the risk of athletes collapsing rises.
When Oklahoma State University Athletics team physician Dr. Jason Moore discusses heat exposure in triple-digit temperatures, he often encounters a common misconception. The first question he hears is whether hydration affects the risk.
“You can be hydrated, or you can be dehydrated, you still have a risk depending upon what the relative humidity, the temperature, the direct sunlight exposure is,” Moore said. “I think you need to hydrate when exposed to high temperatures, there is evidence showing electrolyte abnormalities in hydration may have an impact on the body leading to heat cramps, but you're just as at risk of heat stroke regardless of hydration status.”
Moore led the August Athletic Training-Sports Medicine Project ECHO — a collaboration between the Human Performance and Nutrition Research Institute and OSU Center for Health Sciences . He provided critical resources to help medical and school professionals prepare to respond appropriately when an athlete collapses from suspected arrhythmia, heat exposure or head injury.
Project ECHO is a guided-practice model that reduces health disparities in underserved and remote areas of the state. Expert teams share their knowledge via virtual clinics to help local providers deliver best-in-practice care to rural communities.
“There are really three different types of heat illness that we're worried about, heat cramps, heat exhaustion and heat stroke,” Moore said.
Heat cramps are likely caused by electrolyte imbalances. Athletes should hydrate more both at home and during practice, while also supplementing with electrolytes as needed.
Heat exhaustion can cause nausea, vomiting, fatigue, headaches and an increased internal temperature. Affected athletes should be moved to a cool environment immediately, rest for 48-72 hours, and gradually return to heat for acclimatization.
Heat strokes have similar symptoms but include neurological signs, putting athletes at high risk of seizures. Personnel should call 911 immediately and initiate cooling procedures according to the emergency action plan.
Heat exposure can be mitigated through acclimatization, frequent breaks and practicing when the risk is lower.
When it comes to head injuries during games or training, Moore said any loss of consciousness, confusion, headache, dizziness or any other neurologic symptoms should be treated like a concussion and evaluated urgently by a certified athletic trainer or physician.
Sudden cardiac collapse is another concern we should all be prepared to deal with on the field of play.
When NFL player Damar Hamlin collapsed during the Jan. 2, 2023, Monday Night Football game, he experienced a traumatic cardiac arrest.
Hamlin had no known congenital conditions like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy or arrhythmias that would increase his risk.
Although we cannot predict this type of cardiac arrest, a simple EKG can detect irregular rhythms, and abnormal electrical patterns of the heart allowing a preventative approach and a well-prepared emergency action plan can ensure personnel are ready for such events.
“One issue with an EKG is, you're not going to catch every arrhythmia out there, but just discovering one may save a life and by getting them to a cardiologist or electrophysiologist before the season even starts allows you to make a more informed decision about fitness to play,” Moore said.
An emergency action plan is crucial for these types of circumstances, and can save an athlete's life by ensuring equipment, like an automated external defibrillator is available at all games and practices, as well as having at least one CPR-certified person on the sidelines and having a plan for medical transportation.
The Athletic Training-Sports Medicine ECHO line funded by the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust is held from noon to 1 p.m. on the second and fourth Wednesday of each month and presents expert knowledge of best practices in the identification, reduction, and treatment of sports-related injuries to keep student athletes active, healthy, and expedite return to play.
Register for upcoming Athletic Training-Sports Medicine ECHO sessions.
COMMENTS
List of New Health and Safety Research Topics 2024. Topic 1: Analysing the Relationship Between Safety Culture, Safety Climate, and Safety Performance in Engineering Facilities: A Systematic Review. Topic 2: The Impact of Training in Maintaining and Promoting a Quality Safety Culture: Evidence From the Labour Intensive Industries of the UK.
National Occupational Mortality Surveillance (NOMS) Protect Yourself at Work - Safety and Health Resources for Spanish Speakers. Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009. Safety Matters - A Safety & Health Training for Young Workers. Last Reviewed: March 27, 2020. Source: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
In addition to relying on the knowledge foundation and research methods of public health and more specifically, traditional occupational safety and health, it will be necessary to bridge disciplinary boundaries across the fields of economics, sociology, psychology, organizational management, social work, public policy, industrial relations, law ...
Occupational health research and Total Worker Health (TWH) ... (OSH) focus, which investigated at least one occupational safety and health topic. This OSH focus was established based on the list of topics and subtopics outlined below (e.g., stress and well-being, physical health, injury and illness, etc.; see Table 1) (Chari et al., 2018 ...
Keywords: occupational health, occupational health and safety . Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements.Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
Occupational medicine is rapidly evolving from preventing health and safety risks in the workplace to promoting health for the total wellbeing of the worker according to the NIOSH "Total Worker Health" approach ().This "Insights in occupational health and safety: 2022" Research Topic of 15 articles reflects this trend worldwide, with contributors from Asia, Europe, America, Africa, and ...
The goal of this special edition Research Topic is to shed light on the progress made in the past decade in the Occupational Health and Safety field and on its future challenges to provide a thorough overview of the status of the art of the Occupational Health and Safety field. This article collection will inspire, inform and provide direction ...
This " Insights in occupational health and safety: 2022 " Research Topic of 15 articles reflects this trend worldwide, with contributors from Asia, Europe, America, Africa, and Oceania. As for the 2021 edition (2), it includes forward-looking contributions focused on old and new occupational risk factors, recent advances and future ...
Compassion, mindfulness, and the happiness of healthcare workers. A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited ...
Clearly, future research needs to be designed to meet the health and safety needs of older workers and contemporary organisational workplaces. Moreover, future research should address these wider issues of context to understand what approach works best in different settings and when designing interventions for older workers.
This study aimed to evaluate and describe the indicators of occupational health, with a focus on the medical expertise and periodic medical examination. This is exploratory-descriptive, cross-sectional, documentary, quantitative, and retrospective research, in the historical series: 2011 to 2015. The number of lost days of work per worker and ...
All NIOSH Workplace Safety and Health Topics, sorted by topic name. Extramural Programs. ... Read about 20 years of nano research in the Director's Desk and find what else is new at NIOSH. ... National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. View All About NIOSH NIOSH Centers Federal Register Notices ...
Occupational h ealth is defined as the highest degree o f physical, men tal, and s ocial well-. being of workers in all occupations. It is the branch of health care which deals with all. aspects ...
Research and projects. Occupational and environmental medicine research contributes toward a scientific basis for policies, guidelines and best practices that lead to improved occupational health and well-being. Our researchers focus on understanding the relationship between exposure and disease, evaluating clinical and population health ...
Currently, it remains hard to track the transfer of occupational safety and health research to practice by others, including regulatory agencies and the private sector. The transfer often takes place many years after the research is completed and researchers have shifted their attention to other projects. While researchers may learn, through ...
Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'Occupational Health and Safety.'. Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard ...
A well-written and implemented workplace violence prevention program can reduce the incidence of workplace violence. OSHA's Safety and Health Topics pages provide regulatory and enforcement information, hazard identification and controls as well as best practices and other resources to assist employers, workers and safety and health ...
Mineral Particles and Fibers and Human Health Risks: State-of-the-Art in Characterization, Analysis, Tissue Analytics, Exposure Thresholds for Risk, Epidemiology, and Risk Assessment for Science-Based Regulation and Disease Prevention and Implications for Occupational Health and Safety. Kenneth A. Mundt.
Risk Management. Showers and Eyewash. Training & Software. Transportation Safety. Vision Protection. Wellness. Occupational Health & Safety is the industry-leading news magazine, eNewsletter, and ...
Video (online) Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'Occupational Health and Safety (OHS).'. Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need ...
Relevant answer. Peter Donkor. Dec 12, 2022. Answer. One way to measure the impact of Occupational Health and Safety systems on productivity of a firm is to compare the firm's productivity before ...
Find evidence-based tools and current research initiatives focused on the study of OHS Practices. The Occupational Health and Safety Act sets out the rights and duties of all parties in the workplace, as well as the procedures for dealing with workplace hazards and for enforcement as needed. All workplace parties have a responsibility for ...
Methodology In the present research, first, all the failure modes of the machinery maintenance unit were identified. ... quality, and (iii) cost, identifying, assessing, ranking risks, and Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) can have a significant impact on project objectives. The machinery maintenance unit has the largest share of the ...
Occupational Health and Safety What you will learn Understand the importance of occupational health and safety (OHS). Identify common workplace hazards and risks. Develop and implement OHS policies and procedures. Conduct effective risk assessments. Investigate accidents and incidents. Implement emergency response plans. Promote a safety culture within the organization. Why take this course ...
Work has an important influence on health and wellbeing. Occupational hazards exist in every workplace, only the type of the hazard or the intensity of the hazard might differ. Occupational health and safety (OHS) is a field devoted to the anticipation, recognition, evaluation, and control of these environmental factors or stresses arising in or from the workplace.
Implement protections from retaliation and set up an anonymous process for workers to voice concerns about Valley Fever-related hazards: Section 11(c) of the OSH Act prohibits discharging or in any other way retaliating against an employee for engaging in various occupational safety and health activities. Examples of violations of Section 11(c ...
Dr. Jason Moore led the August Athletic Training - Sports Medicine Project ECHO — a collaboration between the Human Performance and Nutrition Research Institute and OSU Center for Health Sciences. He provided critical resources to help medical and school professionals prepare to respond appropriately when an athlete collapses from suspected arrhythmia, heat exposure or head injury.