Dr. Peter Smith
Dr. Peter Smith is president and senior scientist at the Institute for Work & Health (IWH) in Toronto, and a professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Prior to moving into the president's role in January 2022, Smith was IWH's scientific co-director.
Smith has a master's in public health from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and a PhD from the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto. He is a former recipient of a New Investigator Award (2008-2013) from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR),a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council (2012-2014), and a five-year CIHR Research Chair in Gender, Work and Health (2014-2018).
Smith has extensive experience conducting research related to work injury and its consequences using large population-based surveys and administrative workers' compensation data. His key research interests include: gender and sex differences in the relationship between work and health; labour market inequalities and their health-related outcomes; labour market experiences of newcomers, older workers, younger workers and other vulnerable labour force subgroups; chronic illnesses and work injury; and trends in working conditions over time.
“I don’t understand how people can think about health without thinking about work. Between our early 20s and our 60s – and later for some people – we spend most of our waking hours at work. It makes sense, then, that aspects of work must have an impact on different aspects of our health, both positively and negatively. That drives me to better understand what good work and bad work look like from a health and return-to-work perspective.” – Dr. Peter Smith
Projects
- Developing an evidence base on sex/gender differences in the relationship between working conditions and injury risk, chronic illnesses and return to work. Funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Completed. (PI on the project)
- Evaluating the impact of mandatory awareness training on occupational health and safety vulnerability in Ontario. Funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Ontario Ministry of Labour's Research Opportunities Program. Completed. (PI on the project)
- IWH Organizational Performance Metric: Developing and evaluating a simple workplace OHS tool. Funded by Workplace Safety & Insurance Board, Ontario Ministry of Labour. Completed.
- Exploring the relationship between prolonged standing and prolonged sitting at work and heart disease among male and female workers. Completed. (PI on the project)
- Incidence of work-related aggression and violence in Canada. Funded by Ontario Ministry of Labour. Completed. (PI on the project)
Publications
- Frank JW, Mustard C, Smith PM, Siddiqi A, Cheng Y, Burdorf A, Rugulies R. Work as a social determinant of health in high-income countries: past, present, and future. Lancet. 2023;402(10410):1357-1367. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(23)00871-1.
- Portt AE, Orchard C, Chen H, Ge E, Lay C, Smith PM. Migraine and air pollution: a systematic review. Headache. 2023;63(9):1203-1219. doi:10.1111/head.14632.
- Robson LS, Chen C, Imam S, Biswas A, Landsman V, Shahidi FV, Smith PM, Mustard C. Differing effects of in-person and online methods of delivering JHSC Certification Part 1 Training. Institute for Work & Health; 2023.
- Biswas A, Chen C, Dobson KG , Prince SA, Shahidi FV, Smith PM, Fuller D. Identifying the sociodemographic and work-related factors related to workers' daily physical activity using a decision tree approach. BMC Public Health. 2023;23(1):1853. doi:10.1186/s12889-023-16747-9.
- OLA BE, Smith PM. What factors explain recent increases in husband-to-wife violence in Nigerian households? A decomposition analysis of three waves of cross-sectional data from 2008 to 2018. Journal of Family Violence. 2023 epub ahead of print. doi:10.1007/s10896-023-00607-6.
Speaker Series presentations
- Refining estimates of occupational exposures and risk of workplace COVID-19 transmission. IWH Speaker Series. January 16, 2024.
- Building on the past, looking to the future: Presenting the IWH Strategic Plan, 2023-27. IWH Speaker Series. May 23, 2023.
- Workplace COVID-19 protections and transmission: Findings from population-level data in Canada. IWH Speaker Series. October 19, 2021.
- Differences in the return-to-work process for work-related psychological and musculoskeletal conditions: findings from an Australian cohort. IWH Speaker Series. April 6, 2021.
- More than just COVID-19 prevention: Exploring the links between PPE, safe work protocols and workers' mental health. IWH Speaker Series. November 10, 2020.
Interviews and articles
- Psychosocial work conditions linked with both positive and negative mental health. At Work: Institute for Work & Health; No. 97, Summer 2019.
- Workplace violence against women rising, driven by growing rates in education sector. At Work: Institute for Work & Health; No. 96, Spring 2019.
- Women’s work more likely than men’s to be disrupted due to caring for older relatives. At Work: Institute for Work & Health; No. 96, Spring 2019.
- Implications of an aging workforce for work injury, recovery, returning to work and remaining at work. OOHNA Journal. April 10, 2019. Available from: https://www.iwh.on.ca/sites/iwh/files/oohna_journal_fw_2019_agingrtw.pdf
- Supportive supervisors help reduce risks when workers face hazards, lack protection . At Work: Institute for Work & Health; No. 95, Winter 2019.