Category: Safety and Health Data

Work as a Key Social Determinant of Health: The Case for Including Work in All Health Data Collections

  Social determinants of health (SDOH) are conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play. These conditions affect a wide range of health and quality of life risks and outcomes. CDC, the World Health Organization (WHO), and others recognize work as a social determinant of health.[1],[2],[3] Despite this recognition, this key SDOH Read More >

Posted on by Andrea L. Steege, PhD, MPH; Sharon Silver, MS, MA; Amy Mobley, MEn; and Marie Haring Sweeney, PhD, MPH2 Comments

Taking Action on Health Equity: A Tale of 2 Clinics

It was the best of timing, it was the worst of timing. As an Occupational Medicine physician, my patients describe their work to me every day. Through these descriptions, I learn a lot about their health and well-being. Managing health in the work environment is important to overall health; yet work information is not captured Read More >

Posted on by Michele Kowalski-McGraw, MD, MPH, FACOEM1 Comment

What Measures Can Companies Use to Evaluate Safety Management Practices and Identify Opportunities for Improvement?

  What measures can companies use to evaluate safety efforts and identify opportunities for improvement?  The most commonly used measures of safety performance are lagging indicators such as injury counts and costs.1,2 While lagging indicators can be beneficial, using them as the only measure of safety can be a barrier to safety improvement. For example, Read More >

Posted on by Libby L. Moore, PhD, Steven J. Wurzelbacher, PhD, I-Chen Chen, PhD, Michael P. Lampl, MS, Steven J. Naber, PhD3 Comments

100 Million and Counting!

When researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) set out to develop a tool that could improve the use of industry and occupational data from surveys, death certificates and other sources, we could only dream that our efforts would be this successful. A Tool to Advance Research, and It’s Free We Read More >

Posted on by Jennifer Cornell, JD; Stacey Marovich, MHI, MS; and Amy Mobley, MEn3 Comments

New Data Available! Assess Causes of Death by Industry and Occupation

Linking Causes of Death to Work Since the early years of National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), mortality data have been an important source of information to assess links between cause of death and work. In the 1980s, the National Occupational Mortality Surveillance (NOMS) program was born out of a collaboration between NIOSH, Read More >

Posted on by Andrea L. Steege, PhD, MPH; Amy Mobley, MEn; Rachael Billock, PhD, MSPH; Hannah Free, MPH; and Marie Haring Sweeney, PhDLeave a comment

Learning from Workplace Fatality Investigations

  Each day, on average, 15 U.S. workers die as a result of a traumatic injury on the job. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) program is a research program designed to identify and study fatal occupational injuries. For nearly 40 years, the FACE program has Read More >

Posted on by Jeff Funke, MS, CSP, and Nancy T. Romano, MS, CSHMLeave a comment

The Role of Demographics in the Future of Work

  The future of work continues to be shaped by ongoing changes in the workplace, work, and workforce. Shifting workforce demographics will present both opportunities and challenges for occupational safety and health (OSH). A central challenge will be ensuring the equitable distribution of work-related benefits and risks that accompany these transformations. To meet this challenge, Read More >

Posted on by Laura Syron, PhD, MPH; Marie-Anne S. Rosemberg, PhD, MN, RN, FAAOHN; Michael A Flynn, MA; Jacqueline Sivén, PhD, MA, MPH; Andrea Steege, PhD, MPH; Sara L. Tamers, PhD, MPH3 Comments

Using Machine Learning to Code Occupational Surveillance Data: A Cooperative Effort between NIOSH and the Harvard Computer Society – Tech for Social Good Program

  The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) depends on surveillance data collected through the occupational supplement to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS-Work) to study and understand nonfatal occupational injuries. Collected through an interagency agreement with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, NEISS-Work captures hospital emergency department-treated occupational injuries to paid, self-employed, Read More >

Posted on by Gavin Lifrieri and Suzanne Marsh, MPA2 Comments

Changing with the Times: The Journey to Interactive Charts

  Our world is constantly evolving. Computers that used to occupy an entire room now fit in the palm of our hands. Information that used to require hours of searching, sorting, and reading is now available with the click of a button. Similarly, the way NIOSH shares work-related public health surveillance data has evolved to Read More >

Posted on by Mike Reh, BA; Rebecca Tsai, PhD; and Amy Mobley, MEn1 Comment

Improving Our Understanding of Nonfatal Occupational Injuries

  Counting and describing nonfatal occupational injuries are vital to understanding and prevention. However, this is very difficult to accomplish on a national level. There are large numbers of injuries that are captured, in part, by different sources, and some are not captured at all. There is no single, comprehensive national source of occupational injury Read More >

Posted on by Audrey Reichard, MPH; and Suzanne Marsh, MPA2 Comments

How Collecting and Analyzing COVID-19 Case Job Information Can Make a Difference in Public Health

  Collecting, coding, analyzing and reporting industry and occupation data from COVID-19 cases is necessary to inform strategies to reduce the impact of the pandemic on workers. As described in the previous blog post, “Collecting occupation and industry data in public health surveillance systems for COVID-19,” it’s important to collect job information for all workers Read More >

Posted on by Sara E. Luckhaupt, MD, MPH; Matthew R. Groenewold, PhD; Amy Mobley, MEn; Stacey Marovich, MHI, MS; and Marie Haring Sweeney, PhDLeave a comment

Measuring Workplace Risks across States

When assessing workplace safety in the United States, we have to consider what measures of risk to use. If all measures are strongly positively correlated, this may not matter. But they are not, so the choice of risk measure does matter: states where employers report the highest rates of non-fatal injuries have the lowest fatality Read More >

Posted on by John Mendeloff, PhD, and Wayne B. Gray, PhD7 Comments

Making Industry and Occupation Information Useful for Public Health: A guide to coding industry and occupation text fields

  **This blog was updated on 3/19/2021 to reflect changes to NIOCCS.** This is the second blog in the series “COVID-19 Surveillance among Workers: What we know and what are we doing to learn more”. To learn more about occupation and industry data collection for acute infectious diseases, see the first blog Collecting occupation and Read More >

Posted on by Stacey Marovich, MHI, MS; Amy Mobley, MEn; and Matthew R. Groenewold, PhD4 Comments

Collecting Occupation and Industry Data in Public Health Surveillance Systems for COVID-19

This is the first blog in the series “COVID-19 Surveillance among Workers: What we know and what are we doing to learn more”. What we know Though the COVID-19 pandemic continues, critical infrastructure industries are operating and other types of businesses are beginning to reopen. Recent studies have reported outbreaks of COVID-19 in several types Read More >

Posted on by Sara Luckhaupt, MD; Sherry Burrer, DVM; Marie de Perio, MD; and Marie Haring Sweeney, PhD4 Comments

Artificial Intelligence Crowdsourcing Competition for Injury Surveillance

In 2018, NIOSH, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) contracted the National Academies of Science (NAS) to conduct a consensus study on improving the cost-effectiveness and coordination of occupational safety and health (OSH) surveillance systems. NAS’s report recommended that the federal government use recent advancements in machine Read More >

Posted on by Sydney Webb, PhD; Carlos Siordia, PhD; Stephen Bertke, PhD; Diana Bartlett, MPH, MPP; and Dan Reitz16 Comments

Using Worker Absenteeism to Track the Flu

Is flu on the rise among workers? Those working in public health track the number of flu-related hospital and doctor visits, but many people suffer symptoms and don’t seek medical treatment. So, how do we know how many people are sick with the flu during a flu pandemic or a seasonal epidemic? Each year, the Read More >

Posted on by Matthew R. Groenewold, PhD6 Comments

Visualizing National Worker Survey Data through Worker Health Charts

Anne is the CEO of a major hospital in a large metropolitan area. She is concerned by reports the Human Resources Department is receiving from employees about harassment and bullying. She understands that harassment and bullying can create a hostile work environment. With these concerns in mind, she includes questions about hostile work environment in Read More >

Posted on by Blair Carlin; CAPT Sara E. Luckhaupt, MD, MPH; and Amy Mobley, MEnLeave a comment

Using Worker Health Charts to Learn About Your Workplace

Jim manages a manufacturing plant that makes office furniture using plywood and other engineered wood products. Their worksite takes worker safety seriously, and is interested to know if the rate of severe injuries they are experiencing is high compared to injuries occurring at other office furniture manufacturing plants. This kind of information may be tricky Read More >

Posted on by Rebecca Tsai, PhD, and Amy Mobley, MEn1 Comment

Capturing Work-related Injuries from Emergency Department Data

Work-related injuries frequently occur, despite the fact that many are preventable. It is critical that we accurately describe and monitor these injuries in order to improve prevention efforts. Because there is no comprehensive data source that captures all work-related injuries, the occupational injury community relies on multiple sources to describe the problem. The occupational supplement Read More >

Posted on by Audrey Reichard, Suzanne Marsh, and Rebecca OlsavskyLeave a comment

Using Occupation and Industry Information to Better Serve Your Patient Population

Conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play affect a wide range of health risks and outcomes. On average, American workers spend close to half their waking hours at work. As a result, work can have significant impacts on health. As electronic health records (EHRs) are replacing paper medical records in most Read More >

Posted on by Debbie Hoyer, MPH, Nicole Edwards, MS, Christina Socias-Morales, DrPH4 Comments