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It’s such a crucial time in one’s life, those early years when young adults find their first jobs and start making their way in the working world. For young people with a disabling health condition, it can be a frustrating time of finding barriers at every turn. What programs can help these young adults enter the labour market? In a recent IWH Speaker Series presentation, Dr. Arif Jetha shared findings from a systematic review. 
 

Research suggests that 380,000 Canadians are exposed to silica dust at work and, each year, 200 new cases of lung cancer in Ontario can be attributed to silica dust exposure. In this IWH Speaker Series presentation, Dr. Emile Tompa looked at the costs and benefits of two types of silica dust prevention strategies: use of personal protective equipment or use of engineering controls (i.e. the wet method). His presentation is now available as a slidecast.  

Ridicule and belittlement, gossip and back-stabbing, unclear job expectations, unfair treatment, relentless work demands. Research shows that psychosocial work conditions such as the above are as serious as any other safety hazard. That was why the Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers (OHCOW) set out to create a tool to help workplaces tackle psychosocial hazards. And IWH was happy to lend its tool development expertise.

If you’re confused by seemingly duelling headlines about the negative health effects of prolonged sitting and prolonged standing, we’ve got a video for you. It just so happens that two of the scientists behind these headlines work at the Institute for Work & Health. We put them before the camera, side by side, to sort out the take-away message.

New researchers with an expertise in social, behavioural, organizational, clinical and/or population health sciences are invited to apply for a post-doctoral Mustard Fellowship in Work & Health. The Institute is looking for recent PhD graduates with an interest in doing research related to one of its two overarching priorities: work as a determinant of health and health as a determinant of work. The deadline for applications is Friday, December 14, 2018.

Disability and Work in Canada 2018, taking place December 3-4, 2018 in Ottawa, will engage delegates in reviewing and building consensus around a proposed national strategy to improve the level of employment among people with disabilities in Canada. The conference is being hosted by the Disability and Work in Canada Steering Committee, which includes among its members a number of executive members of the Centre for Research on Work Disability Policy, a pan-Canadian, multidisciplinary research centre established in 2014 and headquartered at the Insitute for Work & Health.

The Fall 2018 issue of At Work is now available. Inside this issue: promising strategies to reduce the misuse and abuse of prescription opioids, a round-up of the external grants awarded to Institute scientists, the Institute's role in the development of a toxic workplace screening tool, and more. If you didn't get your issue in your inbox, download the PDF here.

Since the start of the opioid crisis in the late 1990s, communities across North America have tried many different strategies to curb the misuse and abuse of prescription opioids. In an open-access systematic review, an IWH team analyzes the effectiveness of the studied strategies, identifies the most promising ones, and points out unintended consequences. 

Recreational cannabis is now legal in Canada and many employers are concerned about the potential implications for workplaces. In this IWH Speaker Series presentation, Dr. Nancy Carnide shares early findings of a survey, conducted in June 2018, on patterns of cannabis use at work and workers' perceptions of such use. 

Health conditions such as depression, Crohn’s disease and HIV have at least one thing in common. People with these conditions can be in good health for long periods of time and then experience bouts of debilitating symptoms. These recurring and hard-to-predict episodes can make asking for, and providing, workplace accommodation a challenge. Now, Dr. Monique Gignac is leading research aimed at making conversations around accommodation easier, thanks to funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

Despite advances in clinical care, millennial young adults with rheumatic disease continue to face challenges finding work and staying productive at work. Workplace policies can help overcome these challenges, but too often they’re aimed at older adults. An IWH study is currently under way to understand what supports millennials with rheumatic disease need from employers. This survey is a first step. Please help us get it into the hands of young workers with lupus, juvenile arthritis, scleroderma and other forms of rheumatic disease. Click on the survey or find out more about this project.

Do men and women with arthritis have different workplace accommodation needs? And do they differ in their access to workplace supports to meet these needs? A study published by IWH’s Dr. Monique Gignac recently examined these questions. It found unequal levels of access to support, which can be explained by the types of work that men and women do.

A study examining the business case for employing people with mental illnesses found a net benefit in each of the workplaces in which an accommodation cost-benefit evaluation was conducted. For employers, the economic benefits ranged from two to seven times the costs incurred. For the accommodated workers, they ranged from four to 12 times the costs.

We are seeking a research analyst for a 12-month, full-time contract to be part of a project examining the concept of occupational health and safety (OHS) vulnerability across provinces. Deadline for applications is Friday, October 5.

The financial costs of work-related injury and illness may be well known, but limited information is available on what employers spend to control or eliminate the causes of work-related injury and illness. A new Issue Briefing describes the results of a 2017 study to estimate occupational health and safety expenditures among employers from 17 economic sectors in Ontario, Canada.

A supervisor’s supportive reaction to an injury—for example, by expressing empathy and reassurance instead of skepticism and blame—significantly increases the likelihood that the injured worker will successfully return to work. That’s according to a recent study conducted by a research team at the Institute for Work & Health (IWH) and Australia’s Monash University. 

Two early-career researchers have been awarded the 2018/19 S. Leonard Syme Training Fellowships in Work & Health. The two fellows are Corey McAuliffe, PhD candidate in social and behavioural health sciences at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and Julia Goyal, PhD candidate in public health and health systems at the University of Waterloo’s School of Public Health and Health Systems. Congratulations Corey and Julia. We look forward to working with you.

Women working in Ontario’s education sector are four to six times more likely than their male counterparts to require time off work because of being physically assaulted on the job. This is according to a study by the Toronto-based Institute for Work & Health (IWH), recently published online in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

The Institute’s Alf Nachemson Memorial Lecture takes place this year on November 28. The lecture will be delivered by Dr. Paul Demers, director of the Occupational Cancer Research Centre (OCRC). In this role, Demers has been working with colleagues and collaborators across the country to develop and improve the surveillance of work-related cancers, establish their human and economic burden, and draw on research to develop policy recommendations aimed at preventing exposure. The event, to take place at the Design Exchange in downtown Toronto, is free and open to the public.

Women who work 45 hours or more a week face a 63 per cent higher risk of developing diabetes than women who work 35-44 hours. Among men who work long hours, however, the incidence of diabetes tends to go down. This is according to a study by the Institute for Work & Health (IWH) and Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, which followed a sample of 7,000 Ontario workers over 12 years. The findings, published in July in an open access article in BMJ Diabetes Research & Care, highlight the importance of work and health research that includes sex/gender-based analyses.

Help coordinate a large partnership research grant examining chronic illness needs in the workplace. As a Research Associate, your primary duties would include programming surveys, coordinating and conducting interviews and focus groups, organizing workshops and working with team members to analyze qualitative data. Apply now or help us spread the word. This job posting closes August 31. 

What can we learn from sex/gender analyses of work exposures and health? That women who work long hours face a greater of risk of developing diabetes, but not men. Or that men and women with arthritis may have the same needs for workplace support, but different access to those supports. Read about this research in a special package on sex/gender analysis in the latest issue of At Work. Also, learn about a study that found benefits outweigh costs for workplaces that accommodate people with mental illness.

As we head into another summer here in Canada, workplaces should be especially mindful of protecting outdoor workers from harmful sun exposure. An economic burden study by Institute for Work & Health (IWH) Senior Scientist Dr. Emile Tompa puts the costs in Canada of non-melanoma skin cancers due to work-related sun exposure diagnosed in just one year (2011) at almost 35 million dollars. Skin cancers are the most common form of cancer in Canada. The risks of sun exposure on the job are the highest for people doing construction, road work, farming, landscaping, and transportation and warehousing.

The research literature to date suggests that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can help people with depression stay at work—and CBT with a focus on work can help people return to work after a depression-related absence. These findings from a systematic review, on workplace interventions to manage depression, were the focus of an IWH Speaker Series presentation in January 2018. If you missed that presentation or want to watch it again, it's available as a slidecast.