Past events
IWH Speaker Series
Finding common ground in OHS: The use of commemoratives in young worker injury prevention
Elizabeth Mansfield, Institute for Work & Health
This presentation reports on findings from a case study of the Canadian LifeQuilt, a commemorative quilt and online memorial website dedicated to the remembrance of 100 young workers who died at work.
IWH Speaker Series
Enacting the service role: Implications of “backstage” behaviour by service agents in response to customer aggression
Aaron Schat, McMaster University
Using this dramaturgical perspective of customer service work as a framework, Dr. Aaron Schat, assistant professor of organizational behaviour and human resource management at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business, will examine the emotional and behavioural responses of service agents to customer aggression. In particular, he will look at the types of backstage behaviours adopted by customer service agents to manage the stress and emotions that arise from their on-stage experiences of customer aggression. He will present the results of a recent study examining the implications of backstage behaviour on service agents’ work attitudes, behaviour and well-being.
IWH Speaker Series
Preventing construction accidents at design concept and research
Carmine Tiano, Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario
Construction worker safety continues to be a major concern for the construction industry. While significant improvements have been made in the last few decades, efforts must be made to strive for the zero accident objectives. The presentation reviews the relevant research and other jurisdictions which have implemented construction design regulations in the United Kingdom.
IWH Speaker Series
Examining trends in no-lost-time claims in Ontario, 1991-2006
Peter Smith, Institute for Work & Health
In this presentation, Institute Scientist Dr. Peter Smith reviews recently completed work examining trends in no-lost-time claims and lost-time claims in Ontario between 1991 and 2006. The results are based on administrative data combined with labour force survey estimates across different labour force subgroups (age, gender, industry and workplace size).
IWH Speaker Series
Working with a chronic illness: Making work changes, coping and disclosure of arthritis in the workplace
Monique Gignac, Toronto Western Research Institute
Considerable evidence links chronic physically disabling diseases like arthritis to loss of employment. However, until recently, few studies have focused on the employment experiences of these individuals. In this presentation, Dr. Monique Gignac, a senior scientist with the Division of Health Care and Outcomes Research and a research investigator with the Arthritis Community Research and Evaluation Unit at the Toronto Western Research Institute, presents findings on psychosocial aspects of living and working with arthritis.
IWH Speaker Series
A systematic review of health and safety in small enterprises: Findings from quantitative and qualitative literature
Ellen MacEachen, Institute for Work & Health; Curtis Breslin, Institute for Work & Health
In this presentation, Institute Scientists Dr. Ellen MacEachen and Dr. Curtis Breslin outline the key findings from a systematic review of international peer-reviewed literature to identify effective occupational health and safety interventions and implementation directions for small businesses.
IWH Speaker Series
An examination of the working conditions and risk factors for work-related injuries among immigrant workers in Ontario
Peter Smith, Institute for Work & Health
In this presentation, Dr. Peter Smith reports the results of a recently completed project at the Institute for Work & Health examining OHS risk factors, work injuries and compensation after injury among recent immigrant workers in Canada. The results suggest that recent immigrants to Canada face a number of OHS hazards that put them at increased risk of work-related injuries requiring medical attention. In addition, the results suggest recent immigrants are at an increased risk of not receiving any compensation following a work-related absence of seven days or longer.
IWH Speaker Series
The case for specific targeted enforcement when regulatory oversight by professionals is inadequate
Michael Chappell, Ontario Ministry of Labour (MOL)
In this presentation, Michael Chappell, the provincial coordinator of the Construction Health and Safety Program within the Ontario Ministry of Labour’s Occupational Health and Safety Branch, focuses on recent concerns around crane safety in the wake of a number of major accidents, including those in New York State that claimed several lives.
IWH Speaker Series
The Mustard Fellowship 2006-2008: Subgrouping of workers on disability benefits due to low back pain
Ivan Steenstra, Institute for Work & Health
In this presentation Ivan Steenstra, an epidemiologist and kinesiologist and the Mustard Postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Work & Health from 2006 to 2008, provides an overview of the work he has done on sub-grouping of workers on disability/sick leave due to low back pain.
IWH Speaker Series
A review of evaluations of social marketing campaigns in occupational injury, disease or disability prevention
Cameron Mustard, Institute for Work & Health
The primary objective of this review was to conduct a review of evaluations of social marketing campaigns in the fields of occupational injury prevention, occupational disease prevention or the prevention of disability. In pursuing this objective, our purpose was to identify those evaluations conducted to higher quality standards and to describe the most important results reported from these higher quality studies. A secondary objective was to examine the quality of economic evaluations conducted in this field and to complete, if feasible, an assessment of the cost-effectiveness of social marketing interventions in occupational injury, disease or disability prevention.
Alf Nachemson Memorial Lecture
Quality improvement in health-care services for injured workers
Thomas Wickizer, University of Washington
For the 2008 Nachemson Memorial Lecture, Dr. Thomas Wickizer will discuss how Washington State has improved the quality of health care in its workers’ compensation system. He will describe the evolution of these efforts since 1995, leading to a major system intervention that provided financial incentives to physicians and introduced structural changes in the workers’ compensation health-care delivery system. An evaluation of this intervention indicates these changes are associated with reductions in disability for injured workers, and decreased costs. Dr. Wickizer will also speak about the importance of collaboration among researchers, the state’s Department of Labor and Industry, and business and labour stakeholder groups in order for research to influence policy.
Alf Nachemson Memorial Lecture
Safety climate: The role of leadership in enhancing workplace safety
David Stuewe, Dalhousie University
There is increasing recognition of the influence of workplace safety culture and safety climate in protecting the health of employees. With this recognition comes a heightened interest in effective approaches for strengthening workplace safety climate and safety culture. This lecture will explore the role of executive and front-line leadership in creating and maintaining workplace cultures that promote safety. Professor Stuewe will present case studies showing the importance of measuring workplace climate through the eyes of workers. He will describe the effectiveness of leadership training of both managers and supervisors as a key instrument in strengthening the safety culture of a workplace.
Alf Nachemson Memorial Lecture
Preventing the burden of workplace MSDs: What do we know about what works?
Barbara Silverstein, Safety & Health Assessment and Research for Prevention (SHARP), Washington State Department of Labor and Industries
In this important lecture, Dr. Silverstein will look at the enormous burden work-related musculoskeletal disorders has on employees and will review what has worked in primary and secondary prevention. She will also consider the impact of regulatory approaches in the United States and other countries.
Alf Nachemson Memorial Lecture
Reducing disability and improving return to work: Where do we go from here?
Glenn Pransky, Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety
In this lecture, Dr. Pransky, who is the Director of the Center for Disability Research at Liberty Mutual Research Center for Safety and Health and whose research interests are in the areas of disability and outcome measurement particularly for work-related musculoskeletal disorders, talks about the current state of research aimed at reducing disability and improving return to work and the next steps.
Alf Nachemson Memorial Lecture
Healthy work environments: Canada’s next big idea
Graham Lowe, The Graham Lowe Group
Employers want efficiency, productivity and adaptability. Employees want decent jobs that offer dignity, respect, personal development and economic security. Communities and citizens want ethical corporate behaviours. Unions want equity and fairness. Governments are promoting innovation and skills as the route to a better quality of life. And not least, researchers want the best evidence on healthy workplace determinants translated into practice. While now separate, these discourses converge in a composite picture of what a healthy, productive and responsible organization looks like. This vision points the way to positive workplace change and can be a rallying point for a societal project—Canada's Next Big Idea that, over time, can shift how we think and act at work.
Alf Nachemson Memorial Lecture
Future prospects for evidence-based medicine: Getting closer to the destination
Jeremy Grimshaw, University of Ottawa
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has come a long way in the last decade, but the important “next step”–turning scientific knowledge into evidence-based practice (EBP)–is proving to be more of a challenge. At the inaugural Alf Nachemson Lecture, Dr. Jeremy Grimshaw, co-ordinating editor of the Cochrane Collaboration’s Effective Practice and Organisation of Care Review Group, Director of Clinical Epidemiology at the Ottawa Health Research Institute and an expert in evidence-based practice, talks about the misconceptions about and obstacles to evidence-based practice.