What's new

If you were 22, trying to get a career started, and you had arthritis, would you tell your boss or co-workers about it? Institute for Work & Health (IWH) Associate Scientist Dr. Arif Jetha recently looked into the experiences of young people with chronic conditions. And he heard from participants who faced difficult choices around whether or not to disclose their health conditions. His study, published in the journal Disability and Rehabilitation, explored the issues.

Can an OHS training program be improved by modifying it to address gaps in essential skills? In a new study, a research team at IWH pilot-tested a modified version of a hoisting and rigging training program offered by the Labourers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA) Local 506. The changes were made to address trainees’ skills gaps in numeracy and document use that were related to the job. Last November, the team presented its findings, and that presentation is now available as a slidecast. Good news: it turns out the trainees in the program modified to address essential skills did better.

Happy new year! With the start of 2018, here's a reminder that the long-running IWH plenary series has been renamed the IWH Speaker Series: New and Emerging Research in Work and Health.

The hour-long public presentations, by work and health researchers from IWH, across Canada and around the world, are usually held at 11 a.m. Tuesdays at the Institute’s downtown Toronto location. People who can’t attend in person can watch the presentation via a live stream. Check the schedule often for upcoming presentations, including two this month—one on the burden of occupational cancer and the other on workplace interventions to manage depression. 

Congratulations to three public health researchers who have been named recipients of IWH’s 2017/2018 S. Leonard Syme Training Fellowships in Work and Health. The fellowships were established in honour of Dr. Syme, a pioneer in the field of social epidemiology and chair of IWH’s Scientific Advisory Committee from 1995 to 2002. The three recipients and their research projects are:

• Meghan Crouch, University of Waterloo—Mental health in the workplace;
• Kimberly Sharpe, University of British Columbia—Regional variation in health care in five Canadian workers’ compensation systems and its relationship to return to work; and
• Robert Shaw, University of British Columbia—Supporting employment for young adults with disabilities.

The federal government says it’s committed to legislation making recreational cannabis legal by July 1, 2018. As that date approaches, many workplace parties are concerned about the implications for occupational health and safety (OHS). So what does the research to date say about marijuana use and OHS? Find out in a Q&A with two of our researchers. (Hint: There’s a lot we need to learn.)

There has been a lot of interest in recent years in the health risks of prolonged sitting. However, a recent study by IWH and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences found the risk of heart disease is twice as high for people in jobs that mostly involve standing (e.g. cooks, tellers, cashiers) compared to those in jobs that involve mostly sitting. Read about the findings, and check out a sidebar that tackles some of the misconceptions out there about the study. (Here’s one: It’s not about standing desks.)

The Institute for Work & Health (IWH)’s leading indicator tool—the popular Organizational Performance Metric (IWH-OPM)—has been adapted for use in Manitoba as part of a province-wide safety culture initiative. IWH Senior Scientist Dr. Ben Amick worked with SAFE Work Manitoba on many aspects of the initiative, including a definition of “safety culture” for the province, the development of a workplace-based safety culture assessment tool, and the development of frameworks for evaluating safety certification and safety culture in the province overall. The workplace-based tool, called the Safety Culture Assessment (SCA), is being offered to workplaces to help them understand and improve their safety culture. Moreover, it is also being incorporated into the province’s SAFE Work Certified program to assess whether safety certification helps improve a workplace’s safety and health management system in reducing the risk of injury and illness.

Are immigrants more vulnerable to workplace hazards than Canadian-born workers? What can we do to promote the safe integration of newcomers into the labour market? How do workers with limited English proficiency navigate the workers’ compensation system after an injury? Studies on these research questions were recently presented at the 2017 Research & Policy Forum on Immigration, Work & Health at Toronto’s city hall. Those lectures are now available as slidecasts.

IWH’s OHS Vulnerability Measure defines vulnerability to work-related injuries and illnesses as a combination of hazard exposure and insufficient protection due to inadequate policies and practices, low awareness of occupational health and safety (OHS) risks and/or lack of empowerment. Now, thanks to the support of WorkSafeNB, the 27-item worker health and safety survey at the heart of the tool is available in French—as is a new video about what the tool does.

The economic burden of mesotheliomas and lung cancers due to work-related exposures to asbestos diagnosed during a one-year period is $2.35 billion in Canada. That’s according to an economic evaluation by IWH. The estimate, higher than previously reported, was recently published in an open-access article. A study update is available in At Work.

Benefit claims for mental illness are a challenge for income support program administrators. How to prove the illness and verify its duration are just some of the difficulties identified by Dr. Ashley McAllister in her study on policy design. McAllister, a post-doctoral fellow at Sweden’s Karolinksa Institute, recently shared her findings at a plenary hosted by IWH, where she was a visiting researcher. Read the highlights of that presentation in a new At Work article.

Save the date! Look back at the progress made in opening the world of work to people with disabilities and injured workers. Identify current challenges and opportunities and develop a vision and strategy for the future. On November 27-29, join advocates, employer and labour stakeholders, researchers and policy-makers at the National Conference on Disability and Work in Canada, to be held at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. This conference is hosted by the Centre for Research on Work Disability Policy (an IWH project), in collaboration with the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work, the Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups, and InclusionNL.

The familiar plight of foreign-trained professionals not getting hired in Canada is not exclusive to doctors, nurses and engineers. Researchers and analysts from abroad also face similar hurdles. That’s why IWH has teamed up with Access Alliance and other organizations to create a pilot program. It’s aimed at providing foreign-trained researchers and analysts a paid opportunity to network, find mentors and gain Canadian work experience.

A mandatory occupational health and safety (OHS) awareness training initiative in Ontario, introduced in July 2014, appeared to increase participation in training about health and safety rights and responsibilities. And workers who reported receiving the training were found to have higher levels of OHS awareness compared to workers who had not received training.

A safety climate audit tool for mining operations is now being piloted in Ontario. Developed as a result of Ontario’s Mining Health, Safety and Prevention Review, the tool is a product of collaboration among the Institute for Work & Health (IWH), Workplace Safety North (WSN) and the Ontario Mining Association. Read about what’s called the Internal Responsibility System Climate Assessment and Audit Tool (IRS CAAT), and the work that went into its development in the latest issue of At Work.

Strengthening rehabilitation services is becoming a key challenge to health systems around the world, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In February, the global body released new guidelines encouraging countries to ramp up their rehabilitation services to ensure people with health conditions function at their best. The guidelines are evidence-based—and that is where IWH comes in. Institute Scientist Dr. Andrea Furlan led a team that provided the research evidence behind five of the nine recommendations in the new WHO guidelines.