Past events
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IWH Speaker Series
A national scan of safety resources for recent immigrants entering the Canadian workforce
Agnieszka Kosny, Institute for Work & Health; Marni Lifshen, Institute for Work & Health
In this presentation, Dr. Agnieszka Kosny and Marni Lifshen talk about a project that examined the services, programs and resources available to newcomers to Canada that focus on employment standards, occupational health and safety and workers’ compensation. They discuss trends in the types of resources available, identify important gaps, and highlight case studies of programs that present interesting opportunities for providing this information to newcomers.
IWH Speaker Series
Health care and WSIB challenges for temporary foreign workers
Janet McLaughlin, International Migration Research Centre, Wilfred Laurier University
Approximately 30,000 migrant farm workers come to Canada annually through two federal temporary labour migration programs. Working in one of the country’s most dangerous industries, such workers often find themselves in precarious positions. Health concerns are common. Numerous issues, such as their temporary work and immigration status, language and cultural differences, vulnerable employment positions, dependency on employers to access services and high levels of mobility, pose challenges to accessing health-care and workers’ compensation systems. This plenary will present preliminary findings from an ongoing research project, funded by the WSIB, that is interviewing 100 primarily male migrant farm workers in Ontario about their experiences with workplace health and safety. The research also features dozens of interviews with stakeholders such as employers, health-care providers, worker advocates and WSIB representatives, as well as 30 in-depth case studies of injured workers.
IWH Speaker Series
Job acquisition for people with severe mental disorders enrolled in supported employment programs
Marc Corbière, University of Sherbrooke School of Rehabilitation
Job acquisition for people with severe mental disorders (e.g., schizophrenia) is still difficult and complex, yet it is considered by many rehabilitation specialists to be a key component in the recovery and rehabilitation of this clientele. Several authors have presented a comprehensive list of barriers or facilitators for people with mental disorders to explain their work integration, including not only individual or internal characteristics, but also programmatic characteristics. This presentation portrays the underlying relationships between the personal concepts that explain the work integration of people with severe mental disorders and, thus, evaluate the strength of variance explained by each concept analyzed in the model (the theory of planned behaviour and self-efficacy theory) and evaluates the salient components in supported employment programs according to perspectives from employment specialists and clients.
IWH Speaker Series
Effect of case management on time to return to work: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Jason Busse, Institute for Work & Health
Case management is increasingly used to oversee incoming claims accepted for wage-replacement benefits; however, there is no standard definition of what constitutes case management, and the impact on return to work is uncertain. IWH Scientist Dr. Jason Busse and his team recently conducted a systematic review of all randomized controlled trials that have assessed case management. At this plenary, Busse will discuss the different forms of case management that have been formally assessed, and present a meta-analysis describing the effect that case management has on return to work for patients in receipt of disability benefits.
IWH Speaker Series
Determinants of nurses' use of facial protective equipment
Kathryn Nichol, Ontario Ministry of Labour (MOL)
Communicable respiratory illness is a serious occupational threat to health-care workers. A key reason for occupational transmission is failure to use appropriate barrier precautions. Facial protective equipment, including surgical masks, respirators and eye/face protection, is the type of personal protective equipment least used by health-care workers, yet it is an important barrier precaution against communicable respiratory illness. This plenary will present the findings of a study that was undertaken to describe nurses’ adherence to recommended use of facial protective equipment and to identify the factors that influence adherence. A two-phased study was conducted.The first phase was a cross-sectional survey of nurses in selected units of six acute-care hospitals in Toronto, Ontario. The second phase was a direct observational study of critical care nurses.
IWH Speaker Series
Systematic review on depression in the workplace
Andrea Furlan, Institute for Work & Health; William Gnam, Institute for Work & Health
In this presentation, IWH scientists Dr. Andrea Furlan and Dr. William Gnam describe the findings of the study that aimed to determine which intervention approaches to manage depression in the workplace have been successful and yielded values for employers in developed economies.
IWH Speaker Series
Repeat workers' compensation claims - who is at risk?
Alex Collie, Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research
Many of the factors associated with risk of work-related injury and associated disability are well-known. Analysis of workers' compensation data has contributed to knowledge in this area. Such analysis almost exclusively treats each workers' compensation claim as a discrete event. A different approach would be to examine risk of injury within an individual worker over a defined period of time. This study sought to describe factors associated with repeat workers' compensation claims and to compare the work disability arising in workers with single and multiple claims.
IWH Speaker Series
Health-care workers who experience mental health issues: "It’s not OK to be not OK"
Sandra Moll, McMaster University
The health-care sector is an important context for understanding the experience of workers with mental health and/or addictions issues. Concerns have been expressed regarding growing rates of mental health-related absenteeism as well as presenteeism among Canadian health-care workers. Although the extent of the problem has been documented from a managerial perspective, little is known about the problem from the perspective of workers themselves, or about how their experiences are shaped by the organizational context within which they work. This presentation will show findings from a study conducted within a large mental health-care facility. The presenter will discuss pervasive, complex, often paradoxical nature of silence surrounding the mental health of health-care workers will be discussed, as well as the role that silence serves in maintaining institutional order.
IWH Speaker Series
The role of organizational policies and practices in return to work: Findings from the readiness for return-to-work cohort
Ben Amick, Institute for Work & Health
Organizational policies and practices (OPPs) are one of a group of leading indicators being examined in Ontario to assess occupational health and safety performance of organizations. In the Institute for Work & Health Readiness for Return-to-Work Cohort, the relationship between OPPs and return to work and successful work functioning are examined. In particular, we examine two ways through which OPPs may operate to affect important return-to-work outcomes.
IWH Speaker Series
Mortality following unemployment in Canada, 1991-2001
Cameron Mustard, Institute for Work & Health
This presentation will describe the association between unemployment and cause-specific mortality for a cohort of working-age Canadians. The cohort is based on the census mortality follow-up study, a representative 15 per cent sample of the non-institutionalized population of Canada aged 30-69 at cohort inception in 1991 who were followed for 11 years (888,000 men and 711,600 women who were occupationally active).
IWH Speaker Series
Examining trends in the incidence and cost of workers’ compensation claims in the Ontario and British Columbia long-term care sectors, 1998-2007
Cameron Mustard, Institute for Work & Health
More than 60,000 full-time equivalent workers are employed in the long-term care sector in Ontario and more than 14,000 in British Columbia. How do the rates and nature of their workplace injuries compare? How do experience rating programs and other policy initiatives in the two provinces influence injury prevention and disability management practices within their respective long-term care sectors? Answers to these questions are starting to emerge from a study examining trends in workers' compensation claim activity and benefit expenditures for work-related health conditions among employees in the long-term care sectors in British Columbia and Ontario from 1998-2007. IWH President and Senior Scientist Dr. Cam Mustard will discuss the preliminary findings of this two-year study, which is now at its mid-point.
IWH Speaker Series
The Ontario Health Study: Creating platforms for revolutionary science and transformational biology
Lyle Palmer, Ontario Health Study
This presentation describes the Ontario Health Study (OHS) - the biggest community-based health study ever undertaken in North America. The OHS is a long-term study that will help us understand the causes, prevention and treatment of diseases such as cancer, heart disease, asthma and diabetes.
IWH Speaker Series
A delicate dance with many partners: Immigrant workers’ experiences of injury reporting and claim filing
Agnieszka Kosny, Institute for Work & Health
Based on a qualitative study with new immigrants and service providers, this presentation will examine new immigrants’ experiences of injury reporting and claim filing. Suggested are some ways that policies and practices related to injury prevention, health and safety education and workers’ compensation can be changed to better serve new immigrant workers.
IWH Speaker Series
Light's contributions to well-being: implications for workplaces
Jennifer Veitch, National Research Council (NRC) Institute for Research in Construction
In addition to being the stimulus for vision, there is increasing evidence that light influences biology and behaviour through other mechanisms. Laboratory studies, clinical evidence, and epidemiological studies are elucidating effects on hormone regulation, neurotransmitter function, and revealing behavioural and health effects not previously recognized. For instance, daytime light exposure influences both immediate social behaviours and night-time sleep quality. The evidence suggests that good health requires a minimum daily dose of light, although we do not yet know what the dose ought to be. The presentation will give an overview of recent research, give an indication of research gaps, and summarize possible implications for practical applications through workplace design, architecture, and individual light hygiene habits.
IWH Speaker Series
Precarious employment and the internal responsibility system
Wayne Lewchuk, McMaster University
Research over the last few years has advanced our understanding of the impact of precarious employment on health. Approaches such as the Employment Strain Model developed by Lewchuk, Clarke and deWolff point to the interaction between employment uncertainty, effort finding and keeping employment, and support at work as key determinants of the health outcomes of workers in precarious employment. At the same time, workers in precarious employment face a health and safety regulatory system that was designed at time when the standard employment relationship was the norm and unions had some influence in Canadian workplaces. This presentation will use our understanding of how work affects the health of precarious workers to explore the limitations of the existing health and safety regulatory framework. Much of the discussion will focus on the kinds of policies and initiatives that will improve the health of those in precarious employment.
IWH Speaker Series
Occupational safety in hospital nursing: organizational contexts
Sean Clarke, RBC Chair in Cardiovascular Nursing Research
Hospital nurses, like many other providers of health and human services, work in complex organizations, collaborate extensively with a number of different disciplines, and both their work experience and the quality of their clients’ outcomes is heavily influenced by layers of contexts, including the management and policy decisions. Health care as an industry is in a profound state of uncertainty with escalating costs and unrelenting demand joining uncertainty in the stability of financing and the long-term ability of workforce supply to meet demand. After outlining a framework for thinking about organizational context in relation to nurse and patient outcomes in hospital settings, results from a series of studies examining incidence and predictors (both worker and organizational characteristics) of needlestick injuries — at one time a serious occupational health risk in hospital nurses — will be presented in addition to some work regarding psychosocial outcomes (notably burnout and job satisfaction) and patient health outcomes in relation to organizational context. The presentation will then conclude by discussing historical and newer workforce and workforce policy developments related to potential applications of this research, as well as directions for future study.
IWH Speaker Series
The challenges of estimating exposure to workplace carcinogens in Canada
Paul Demers, Occupational Cancer Research Centre
Organizations such as the International Agency for Research on Cancer have identified over 60 workplace carcinogens, and many more suspected carcinogens, to which thousands of Canadians continue to be exposed. However, relatively little is known regarding how many are exposed, where and how they are exposed, and their level of exposure. This data is essential for effective cancer prevention efforts and CAREX Canada was created to fill this data gap. In this presentation I will present an overview of the project, including the creation of a Canadian Workplace Exposure Database, and present some key results for high priority carcinogens in Ontario.
IWH Speaker Series
Examining changes in injuries submitted as no-lost-time claims in Ontario between 1991 and 2006
Peter Smith, Institute for Work & Health
Since 1991, Ontario has seen a divergence in workers’ compensation claim rate trends for injuries that do and do not require time off work. While claims requiring time off work (lost-time claims) have reduced by 46 per cent, claims that do not require time away from work after the day of injury (no-lost-time claims) have remained relatively stable (declining by 9 per cent). At this plenary we will report the results of a recently completed project at the Institute for Work & Health which sought to examine: the factors associated with an increased risk of no-lost-time claims (between 1991 and 2006); trends in the health-care costs associated with no-lost-time claims (between 1991 and 2006); and compare the nature of injury and event leading to injury associated with no-lost-time claims during the introduction of a mandatory experience rating program in the province of Ontario (by extracting injury information from 9,250 no-lost-time claims over four different time periods (1991, 1996, 2000 and 2005). Results related to these objectives will be presented and implications for occupational health and safety injury surveillance and workers’ compensation policy will be discussed.
IWH Speaker Series
Where should we be going, and how should we get there?
Ben Amick, Institute for Work & Health
Leading indicators of occupational health and safety system performance help leaders and decision-makers make evidence informed decisions about targeting strategies, policy needs, organizational changes needed and system equity issues. They create a common ground for discussion and debate about what key occupational health and safety system actors are doing, how well they are doing it and where policy influences practice. A key group of leading indicators are about organizational performance. Yet there remains little consensus on what are the best leading indicators of organizational performance are reflecting little consensus in the scientific community. In Ontario, the Ministry of Labour (MOL), Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) and the Health and Safety Associations (HSAs) collaborated to develop a leading indicator. The work was lead by the Health and Safety Associations and supported by the Institute for Work & Health. The project resulted in a short two-page questionnaire to be administered to management representatives of 1000 Ontario employers. Over 800 employers participated and IWH linked the employer data to WSIB claims data. Results will be presented to show the reliability and validity of the eight questions developed as a leading indicator of organizational performance. Next steps for the use of the metric will be discussed. The project raised many questions and has resulted in a larger survey of 5000 Ontario employers to build on this work and to determine the feasibility of developing a benchmarking knowledge base for the Ontario Prevention System.
IWH Speaker Series
Worker representation in OHS – a good idea going where?
Andy King, United Steel Workers
Although worker participation in OHS is much discussed in theory and practice, worker representation receives much less attention. A key element in improving OHS throughout history, worker representation was formally recognized by the Ham Commission in Ontario in 1976 as a constitutive element of a fair occupational health and safety system. It has been subject to evolving policies since, many of which seek to minimize its significance and reduce worker participation to individual responsibility. The Labour OHCOW Academic Collaboration (LOARC) was created to provide a forum for exploring the role and potential of worker representation. In this presentation, we will discuss the origins of worker representation in OHS, the importance of activism, the significance of Ham’s recommendations and their subsequent adoption into legislation, the challenge of globalization and economic restructuring, and the threat of relativism.