Smith P
Dr. Peter Smith
Scientist
PhD, Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto
Do immigrant workers have higher workplace injury rates than their Canadian-born peers? Institute Scientist Dr. Peter Smith thinks it’s a research question that is very much overlooked.
Dr. Smith is taking an in-depth look at immigrant workers’ experiences in the labour market. Using data from Statistics Canada and other sources, he hopes to answer this important question.
“Immigrant workers make up a large proportion of the Canadian labour force,” says Dr. Smith, who immigrated to Canada from Australia in 2003 while completing his master's degree on a student exchange program. “They are going to account for all labour force growth over the next two decades, yet we don’t have a good understanding of the working conditions they have, or their risk of workplace injury.”
In addition to this study, Dr. Smith is interested in the changing nature of work, how it’s measured, and how working conditions are distributed across the labour market. “I’m interested in finding out what dimensions of work Canadians think are important, if we have routinely collected information that can tell us if these dimensions of work are changing, if particular segments of the labour force are worse off, and why,” he says.
Dr. Smith’s interest in work and health issues sprung from his time as a fitness instructor at a university in Australia. He noticed that staff rarely used its facilities. “Staff were too busy to go to the gym so we went out and gave about 300 staff health and fitness assessments and counselling to promote wellness,” he says. “I thought it was all a matter of an individual just wanting to be fit.” However, he discovered that most people wanted to be fit, but it was the context in which they worked and lived that produced many of the barriers to taking a course of action.
“This experience led me to think about how broader factors at the population and workplace levels impact on individual health behaviours and working conditions,” he says.
Recently, Dr. Smith was awarded a prestigious New Investigator Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Bio Sketch
Dr. Peter Smith is a scientist at the Institute for Work & Health a Senior Research Fellow with the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine and Monash University; and an Assistant Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health. His research interests include:
- Labour market inequalities and their health related outcomes;
- Measurement properties of self-reported survey instruments and administrative data;
- The labour market experience of various labour force sub-groups (e.g. immigrants, older workers and younger workers);
- Path analysis and structural equation modeling;
- Trends in working conditions over time.
Dr. Smith has received a New Investigator Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and he is currently the recipient of a Discovery Early Career Research Award from the Australian Research Council.
Current Projects
The measurement and surveillance of working conditions and lost-time claims in Ontario
Working conditions and health in the Canadian labour market
A longitudinal examination of the relationship between immigrant labour market experiences, health behaviours and the incidence of diabetes and hypertension
Examining the impact of physical conditions and depression on the labour market participation of older working-aged Canadians: exploring differences by gender and sex
Selected Publications
Smith P and Bielecky A. Examining the impact of changes in job strain and its components on the risk of depression. American Journal of Public Health, 2012; 102(2):352-358.
Smith P, Hogg-Johnson S, Mustard C, Chen C, Tompa E. Comparing the risk factors associated with serious versus and less serious work-related injuries in Ontario between 1991 and 2006. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 2012;55:84-91.
Smith P, Bielecky A, Frank J. Intervention research on working conditions and mental health: persistent challenges, new directions and opportunities to integrate research agendas. Healthcare Papers, 2011;11(Special):67-72.
Smith P, Chen C, Hogg-Johnson S, Mustard C, Tompa E. Trends in the health care use and expenditures associated with no-lost-time claims in Ontario: 1991 to 2006. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2011;53(2):211-217.
Smith P, Morassaei S, Mustard C. Examining changes in reported work conditions in Quebec, Ontario and Saskatchewan between 1994 and 2003-05. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 2011;102(2):127-132.