National Occupational Injury Research Symposium (NOIRS)

About NOIRS

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), in association with its public and private sector partners, hosted the third National Occupational Injury Research Symposium (NOIRS) on October 28, 29, & 30, 2003 at the Sheraton Station Square in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. NOIRS is the only forum for the prevention of occupational injury research findings, data, and methods.

NOIRS 2003 was a means of implementing the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) for traumatic occupational injuries. NORA was formulated through the cooperative efforts of business, labor, academic, safety and health, and government leaders under the sponsorship of NIOSH.

This symposium served numerous objectives aimed at preventing traumatic occupational injury through research and prevention. They included:

• Presentation of current research findings.
• Fostered collaboration among researchers from a broad range of disciplines and perspectives, and explored underutilized disciplines and topic areas.
• Identified some best practices in the area of intervention.
• Explored the cost-effectiveness of injury prevention strategies and interventions.
• Showcased innovative and high technology approaches to research and prevention.
• Promoted the implementation of NORA.
• Provided a forum for reporting and fostering research needs identified in the NORA report, Traumatic Occupational Injuries: Research Needs and Priorities.

Questions that were addressed include:

• What are the latest traumatic occupational injury research findings?
• What are emerging problem areas in workplace trauma?
• How is technology being applied to occupational injury research and prevention?
• What activities are being done to implement NORA in the area of traumatic occupational injury?
• What are the best practice intervention and prevention strategies and which strategies do not work? In what specific workplaces and under what circumstances?
• What are the economic costs of traumatic occupational injuries and how cost-effective are the prevention strategies?
• What are current and emerging research areas and disciplines?
• What are the trends in traumatic occupational injury and fatality incidence? In research tools, techniques, and methods? In prevention?
• What specific workplace risks are faced by adolescents older adults, minority workers, non-English-speaking workers, low-literacy workers, and other special populations?
• How can researchers and practitioners in different sectors and disciplines better collaborate and coordinate their activities to reduce traumatic occupational injuries?
• What methods are available to assess, quantify, and compare traumatic occupational injury risks?