IWH in the media

In an article about a report on comorbidities and low back pain from the Workers Compensation Research Institute, reporter Jim Wilson cites IWH research about persistent pain among injured workers in Ontario.

Among recent organized efforts to make jobsites safer, working-at-heights training has been effective, reports an Institute for Work & Health (IWH) study. As Adam Freill reports, in the three-year period after Ontario made working-at-heights training in the construction sector standardized and mandatory, study authors explain that the rate of fall-from-height injuries leading to time off work fell by 19 per cent.

Most workers who use cannabis to treat work-related injuries and illnesses do so without medical guidance or authorization, a recent study out of Canada suggests. This article summarizes findings from the Institute's Ontario Life After Work Injury Study. It found 27.4 per cent of the workers reported using cannabis in the past year. Of that group, 14.1 per cent did so to ease symptoms stemming from a work-related condition, with the majority (67.3 per cent) not receiving guidance on therapeutic cannabis use from a health care provider.

Work has long been considered a social determinant of health, but it has been underused as a lever to address health inequities. That’s the main case an international group of work and health researchers, including IWH researchers, have made in a series of articles on the relationships between work and health recently published in The Lancet, writes Dr. Peter Smith.

Throughout history, periods of technological transformation have introduced new tools to workplaces and altered working conditions in ways that have impacted worker health in both positive and negative ways. The increasing availability of smartphone technology, for example, has given rise to the digital gig economy characterized by temporary and freelance work, or short-term contracts. While this shift presents novel work opportunities, it also contributes to widespread labour market precarity that has negatively impacted the well-being of workers. This article is reprinted from an article authored by IWH's Dr. Arif Jetha in The Conversation Canada.

Businesses are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to solve problems and perform tasks that have traditionally required human intelligence. However, the rapid rate of AI adoption is putting workplaces at risk of overlooking its potentially adverse impacts, particularly those that could impact the health and well-being of workers, writes IWH's Dr. Arif Jetha.

Extreme weather caused by climate change is changing the jobs of health care workers, outdoor labourers, and even flight attendants, writes Gabriela Calugay-Casuga. Research from IWH about the union safety effect is cited.

A study by the Institute for Work & Health (IWH) has shed light on the association between cannabis use and work injury risk. As reported by Ada Tabanao, by distinguishing between on-the-job cannabis consumption and off-duty use, researchers found a significant difference in injury risks.

An estimated one in seven Canadians report using cannabis products to recuperate from work-related physical injuries, according to data published in the journal BMJ Open. Researchers at the Institute for Work & Health surveyed nearly 1,200 Canadians who had received workers’ compensation for either a work-related injury or illness. Fourteen percent of respondents said that they had used cannabis explicitly to recuperate from a workplace injury.

Previously injured workers in sectors including construction, mining and forestry are more likely to end up in the emergency room or to be hospitalized due to opioid-related harm than workers in other sectors in Ontario. Lindsay Kelly reports on findings shared by the Institute for Work & Health and the Occupational Cancer Research Centre at a webinar hosted by EPID at Work, a occupational health research institute at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay.