Current Approaches to Occupational Health


Book Description

Current Approaches to Occupational Health deals with problems and progress in relation to occupational health. This book is organized into 21 chapters written by different contributors. The occupational health issues covered by these chapters include ethical problems in occupational medicine, the role of legislation, regulation and enforcement in occupational health, the monitoring of occupational risks for cancer and the identification and intervention for problem drinkers at work. This book will be of interest to occupational health students and practitioners and to other medical professionals.




A Smarter National Surveillance System for Occupational Safety and Health in the 21st Century


Book Description

The workplace is where 156 million working adults in the United States spend many waking hours, and it has a profound influence on health and well-being. Although some occupations and work-related activities are more hazardous than others and face higher rates of injuries, illness, disease, and fatalities, workers in all occupations face some form of work-related safety and health concerns. Understanding those risks to prevent injury, illness, or even fatal incidents is an important function of society. Occupational safety and health (OSH) surveillance provides the data and analyses needed to understand the relationships between work and injuries and illnesses in order to improve worker safety and health and prevent work-related injuries and illnesses. Information about the circumstances in which workers are injured or made ill on the job and how these patterns change over time is essential to develop effective prevention programs and target future research. The nation needs a robust OSH surveillance system to provide this critical information for informing policy development, guiding educational and regulatory activities, developing safer technologies, and enabling research and prevention strategies that serves and protects all workers. A Smarter National Surveillance System for Occupational Safety and Health in the 21st Century provides a comprehensive assessment of the state of OSH surveillance. This report is intended to be useful to federal and state agencies that have an interest in occupational safety and health, but may also be of interest broadly to employers, labor unions and other worker advocacy organizations, the workers' compensation insurance industry, as well as state epidemiologists, academic researchers, and the broader public health community. The recommendations address the strengths and weaknesses of the envisioned system relative to the status quo and both short- and long-term actions and strategies needed to bring about a progressive evolution of the current system.




Safe Work in the 21st Century


Book Description

Despite many advances, 20 American workers die each day as a result of occupational injuries. And occupational safety and health (OSH) is becoming even more complex as workers move away from the long-term, fixed-site, employer relationship. This book looks at worker safety in the changing workplace and the challenge of ensuring a supply of top-notch OSH professionals. Recommendations are addressed to federal and state agencies, OSH organizations, educational institutions, employers, unions, and other stakeholders. The committee reviews trends in workforce demographics, the nature of work in the information age, globalization of work, and the revolution in health care deliveryâ€"exploring the implications for OSH education and training in the decade ahead. The core professions of OSH (occupational safety, industrial hygiene, and occupational medicine and nursing) and key related roles (employee assistance professional, ergonomist, and occupational health psychologist) are profiled-how many people are in the field, where they work, and what they do. The book reviews in detail the education, training, and education grants available to OSH professionals from public and private sources.




Hazard or Hardship


Book Description

Today, hazardous work kills 2.3 million people each year and injures millions more. Among the most compelling yet controversial forms of legal protection for workers is the right to refuse unsafe work. The rise of globalization, precarious work, neoliberal politics, attacks on unions, and the idea of individual employment rights have challenged the protection of occupational health and safety for workers worldwide. In Hazard or Hardship, Jeffrey Hilgert presents the protection of refusal rights as a moral and a human rights question. Hilgert finds that the protection of the right to refuse unsafe work, as constituted under international labor standards, is a failure and calls for a reexamination of worker health and safety policy from the ground up. The current model of protection follows an individual employment rights framework, which fails to protect workers against the inherent social inequalities within the employment relationship. To adequately protect the right to refuse as a human right, both in North America and around the world, Hilgert argues that a broader protection must be granted under a freedom of association framework. Hazard or Hardship will be a welcome resource for labor and environmental activists, trade union leaders, labor lawyers and labor law scholars, industrial relations experts, human rights advocates, public health professionals, and specialists in occupational safety and health.




Handbook of Occupational Health and Wellness


Book Description

This book integrates the growing clinical research evidence related to the emerging transdisciplinary field of occupational health and wellness. It includes a wide range of important topics, ranging from current conceptual approaches to health and wellness in the workplace, to common problems in the workplace such as presenteeism/abstenteeism, common illnesses, job-related burnout, to prevention and intervention methods. It consists of five major parts. Part I, “Introduction and Overviews,” provides an overview and critical evaluation of the emerging conceptual models that are currently driving the clinical research and practices in the field. This serves as the initial platform to help better understand the subsequent topics to be discussed. Part II, “Major Occupational Symptoms and Disorders,” exposes the reader to the types of critical occupational health risks that have been well documented, as well as the financial and productivity losses associated with them. In Part III, “Evaluation of Occupational Causes and Risks to Workers’ Health,” a comprehensive evaluation of these risks and causes of such occupational health threats is provided. This leads to Part IV, “Prevention and Intervention Methods,” which delineates methods to prevent or intervene with these potential occupational health issues. Part V, “Research, Evaluation, Diversity and Practice,” concludes the book with the review of epidemiological, measurement, diversity, policy, and practice issues–with guidelines on changes that are needed to decrease the economic and health care impact of illnesses in the workplace, and recommendations for future. All chapters provide a balance among theoretical models, current best-practice guidelines, and evidence-based documentation of such models and guidelines. The contributors were carefully selected for their unique knowledge, as well as their ability to meaningfully present this information in a comprehensive manner. As such, this Handbook is of great interest and use to health care and rehabilitation professionals, management and human resource personnel, researchers and academicians alike.




Occupational Health and Safety Management


Book Description

Developed to provide safety and health students with an understanding of the how-tos of implementing an occupational safety and health initiative, the first edition of Occupational Health and Safety Management soon became a blueprint for occupational safety and health management for the smallest- to the largest-sized companies. Competently followin




Bridging Occupational, Organizational and Public Health


Book Description

In our complex, fast changing society, health is strongly influenced by the continuously changing interactions between organisations and their employees. Three major fields contribute to health-oriented improvements of these interactions: occupational health, organizational health and public health. As currently only partial links exist amongst these fields, the book aims to explore potential synergies more systematically. Considering the high mental and social demands in a service and knowledge sector economy, the first part of the book focuses on work-related psychosocial factors. As a large proportion of inequalities in health in developed countries can be explained by inequalities in working conditions, those psychosocial factors with a particularly high public health impact are highlighted. As addressing these psychosocial factors requires to involve the organization as the key change agent, the second part covers approaches to improve public health through organizational level health interventions. The last section takes a look into the future of occupational, organizational and public health: what are the future challenges regarding occupational health and how can they be tackled within and beyond the organizational level. Overall, this integrating book will help to broaden the evidence-base, legitimacy and efficacy of occupational- and organizational-level health interventions and thus increase their public health impact.




Risk-Reduction Methods for Occupational Safety and Health


Book Description

Provides a thorough overview of systematic methods for reducing risks encountered in diverse work places Filled with more theory, numerous case examples, and references to new material than the original text, this latest edition of a highly acclaimed book on occupational safety and health includes substantial updates and expanded material on management systems, risk assessment methods, and OSH-relevant concepts, principles, and models. Risk-Reduction Methods for Occupational Safety and Health is organized into five parts: background; analysis methods; programmatic methods for managing risk; risk reduction for energy sources; and risk reduction for other than energy sources. It comprehensively covers both system safety methods and OSH management methods applicable to occupational health and safety. Suitable for worldwide applications, the author’s approach avoids reliance on the thousands of rules, codes, and standards by focusing on understanding hazards and reducing risks using strategies and tactics. Includes more content on methods for reducing risks, citations of recent research, and deeper coverage of OSH-relevant concepts, theories, and models Merges methods and principles traditionally associated with occupational hygiene, ergonomics, and safety Provides substantial updates on management systems and theories of occupational incidents, and includes new case studies in many chapters to help demonstrate the "real world" need for identifying and implementing risk-reduction strategies Addresses occupational risks that go beyond current regulations and standards, taking an international approach by stressing risk-reduction strategies Supports adoption of the book for university courses by providing chapter-specific learning exercises and support materials for professors Risk-Reduction Methods for Occupational Safety and Health is ideal for safety professionals, system safety engineers, safety engineers, industrial hygienists, ergonomists, and anyone with OSH responsibilities. It is also an excellent resource for students preparing for a career in OSH.




Occupational Health Services


Book Description

Workers and their families, employers, and society as a whole benefit when providers deliver the best quality of care to injured workers and when they know how to provide effective services for both prevention and fitness for duty and understand why, instead of just following regulations. Designed for professionals who deliver, manage, and hold oversight responsibility for occupational health in an organization or in the community, Occupational Health Services guides the busy practitioner and clinic manager in setting up, running, and improving healthcare services for the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and occupational management of work-related health issues. The text covers: an overview of occupational health care in the US and Canada: how it is organized, who pays for what, how it is regulated, and how workers' compensation works how occupational health services are managed in practice, whether within a company, as a global network, in a hospital or medical group practice, as a free-standing clinic, or following other models management of core services, including recordkeeping, marketing, service delivery options, staff recruitment and evaluation, and program evaluation depth and detail on specific services, including clinical service delivery for injured workers, periodic health surveillance, impairment assessment, fitness for duty, alcohol and drug testing, employee assistance, mental health, health promotion, emergency management, global health management, and medico-legal services. This highly focused and relevant combined handbook and textbook is aimed at improving the provision of care and health protection for workers and will be of use to both managers and health practitioners from a range of backgrounds, including but not limited to medicine, nursing, health services administration, and physical therapy.




New Opportunities and Challenges in Occupational Safety and Health Management


Book Description

Global economy and its business environment, and thus the world of work, have recently been influenced by demographic and social changes, globalisation, as well as rapid development and introduction of novel, sophisticated and previously unknown technologies and new business models, especially in the context of the so-called fourth industrial revolution. These changes pose a number of challenges in terms of maintaining and improving occupational safety and health (OSH) management performance, as traditional approaches to OSH management in new working environments may no longer be effective. In view of the above, the overall goal of this book is to present new approaches and methods for improving the effectiveness of OSH management. They are based on state-of-the-art research and are in line with the latest trends and concepts in the field. The book focuses on five thematic areas, which are discussed in respective chapters: 1) Implementing the process approach to OSH management; 2) Improving OSH management systems with fuzzy cognitive maps; 3) Implementing strategic thinking approaches in relation to OSH management; 4) Integrating OSH management within the framework of the CSR concept; 5) Enhancing OSH management processes through the use of smart digital technologies. The methods and solutions discussed may be considered as specific "opportunities" for the improvement to be taken into account in the processes of implementing and maintaining an OSH management system in light of the requirements of the new ISO 45001 standard.