| Exposure-related factors |
- Presence of exposures to hazardous substances, conditions, trauma, etc.
- Existence of unique, novel, or unusual exposures
- Presence of complex environments or combined exposures
- Potential implications of exposures on worker health
- Types of science/research methodologies necessary to address/answer exposure questions
|
| Adverse health event-related factors |
- Observance or anticipation of unique, novel, particularly serious, or unusual adverse health events
- Occurrence of unexpected or unforeseen occupational health issues during or following an event
- Presence of higher than expected number or rates of a specific adverse health event or of overall events
- Occurrence of adverse health problems associated with exposures below applicable occupational limits
|
| Public health significance and scientific importance |
- Ability to provide new knowledge or information about an exposure-outcome relationship
- Ability to evaluate specific exposures or outcomes that have not been adequately studied
- Ability to generalize to other situations or populations
- Ability to confirm or refute a preliminary or pre-existing hypothesis or theory
- Ability to answer questions that need to be answered and cannot be answered any other way
- Ability to contribute to or directly improve the public health response to disasters
- Magnitude of event, for example, a large number of workers exposed or considered at risk
|
| Societal factors |
- High-profile or traumatic event
- Beliefs about harm or resource disparities, particularly among high-risk groups
- Unique vulnerability of the worker population
- Socioeconomic, legal, political, and psychological implications of the event
|
| Feasibility factors |
- Access to the work site(s)
- Ability to quickly collect reliable data, particularly if data could be lost if not collected immediately
- Ability to document or validate human health consequences
- Ability to assign workers into exposure categories to permit exposure-related assessment
- Adequate study size and statistical power
- Ability to identify and locate subjects and records
- Availability of an appropriate control or comparison population
- Ability to address potential confounding factors
- Ability to measure and disentangle the relevant environmental, behavioral, or other factors
- Ability to reasonably estimate or document individual exposure
- Adequacy of resources to support, conduct, and complete the study
- Adequacy of support from employers and unions or other relevant stakeholders (e.g. federal agencies, state or local agencies or components of trade groups, etc.)
- Ability to provide participants with necessary confidentiality
- Ability to address potential ethical issues and obtain expeditious Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for time-sensitive research
- For federal agencies, ability to obtain timely emergency clearance from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for survey instruments that fall under the jurisdiction of the Paperwork Reduction Act
- Adequacy of preliminary or baseline data to support the study (this is implied in some of the above bullets)
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| Level of research interest |
- Research arising from academic/research areas of interest
- Contribution to established institution program goals, such as emergency response research priority areas
|
Taken from Decker JA, et al. 2013. Am J Disaster Med 2013 Jan/Mar; 8(1):25-33.
