Preparing for the Future: NIOSH Applications of Strategic Foresight

Change is all around us, and it is happening more intensely and more rapidly than ever before. NIOSH recognizes that many of the social, technological, economic, environmental, and political changes we experience can impact the design of work and the lives of working people.¹ We also understand the benefit of proactively preparing for future changes and the implications they may bring for the practice of occupational safety and health (OSH).

Since 2020, NIOSH has been engaged in the practice of strategic foresight to better understand, prepare for, and influence the future.² Strategic foresight includes a series of activities that help us identify, assess, and monitor early signals of key changes that may arrive in the future.³ The purpose of strategic foresight is not to accurately predict the future. Instead, the activities work together to help us more clearly and creatively consider what might happen if certain changes arrive and impact OSH in the near-, mid-, and far-term future.⁴

To date, NIOSH has completed two strategic foresight projects to expand our futures thinking and readiness. In early 2023, we published the results of the inaugural NIOSH strategic foresight project, which explored four possible futures and their implications for OSH research and service.⁵ This project identified eight evidence-based drivers of change that will likely impact or shape the future of OSH:

• Advanced technologies
• Climate change
• Data security
• Generating new knowledge
• Social credit and trustworthiness
• Work arrangements
• Virtual work
• Workforce demographic shifts

These drivers were combined in different ways to develop scenarios, or stories, about four possible futures for OSH. The stories were then analyzed to identify strategic focus areas OSH should consider to increase the field’s readiness for the future.

In late 2023, NIOSH published the results of a second strategic foresight project. This project was conducted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and sought to identify how we might best prepare the OSH workforce for future disruptions.⁶ We used nine critical and unanswered questions about the future to develop four unique scenarios for disruptive futures. By analyzing those scenarios, we identified the following critical actions that might better position OSH researchers and practitioners to effectively respond to a wide variety of possible future disruptions:

• Develop effective communication and partnerships between information technology specialists and researchers.
• Bring OSH to individual workers through our research and communications.
• Build public trust in OSH leaders while developing a strategy to stop the spread of mis- and dis-information.

We invite you to use the links provided above to read our papers to learn more about these two important NIOSH strategic foresight projects. We also invite you to contribute to the OSH futures conversation. What issues and trends do you think will shape the future of OSH? What can OSH researchers and practitioners start doing now to be better prepared for future disruptions when they arrive? Comment below to share your thoughts.

Sarah A Felknor, MS, DrPH, is Associate Director for Research Integration at NIOSH.

Jessica MK Streit, MS, PhD, CHES® is Deputy Director of the Office of Research Integration at NIOSH.

References

¹ Schulte PA, Delclos G, Felknor S, Chosewood LC. Toward an Expanded Focus for Occupational Safety and Health: A Commentary. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2019;16(24):4946. doi:10.3390/ijerph16244946

² Streit JMK, Felknor SA, Edwards NT, Howard J. Leveraging Strategic Foresight to Advance Worker Safety, Health, and Well-Being. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2021;18(16):8477. doi:10.3390/ijerph18168477

³ Bishop PC, Hines A. Teaching About the Future. Palgrave Macmillan; 2012.

⁴ Futures School. Can We Count on the Future? Accessed 19 January 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9grlf3CFks

5 Felknor SA, Streit JMK, Edwards NT, Howard J. Four Futures for Occupational Safety and Health. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2023;20(5):4333. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20054333.

6 Streit JMK, Felknor SA, Edwards NT, Caruso DL, Howard J. Preparing the occupational safety and health workforce for future disruptions. Am J Ind Med. 2023 Nov 14. doi: 10.1002/ajim.23548. Online ahead of print.