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NIOSH Program Portfolio

	workersNIOSH Priority Goals for Extramural Research

The leaders of some programs in the NIOSH Program Portfolio have designated one or more strategic goals as particularly suited for advancement by extramural researchers. View the goals selected by a program after selecting the category of program below.

Click on a program’s name to view all the strategic goals adopted by that program.

Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing

  • Strategic Goal 1: Maximize existing surveillance resources in the Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing Sector to describe: the nature, extent, and economic burden of occupational illnesses, injuries, and fatalities; occupational hazards; and worker populations at risk for adverse health outcomes.
  • Strategic Goal 2: Reduce deleterious health and safety outcomes in workers more susceptible to injury or illness due to circumstances limiting options for safeguarding their own safety and health.
  • Strategic Goal 3: Move proven health and safety strategies into agricultural, forestry and fishing workplaces through the development of partnerships and collaborative efforts.
  • Strategic Goal 4: Reduce the number, rate and severity of traumatic injuries and deaths involving hazards of production agriculture and support activities.
  • Strategic Goal 5: Improve the health and well-being of agricultural workers by reducing occupational causes or contributing factors to acute and chronic illness and disease.
  • Strategic Goal 6: Reduce the number, rate and severity of traumatic injuries and deaths involving hazards of forestry.
  • Strategic Goal 9: To improve the health of commercial fishermen by reducing occupational causes or contributing factors to illness and disease.

Construction

  • Strategic Goal 1: Reduce Construction Worker fatalities and serious injuries caused by falls to a lower level.
  • Strategic Goal 3: Reduce fatal and serious injuries associated with struck-by incidents associated with objects, vehicles, and collapsing materials and structures.
  • Strategic Goal 5: Reduce silica exposures and future silica-related health risks among construction workers by increasing the availability and use of silica dust controls and practices for tasks associated with important exposures.
  • Strategic Goal 7: Reduce the incidence and severity of work-related musculoskeletal disorders among construction workers in the U.S.
  • Strategic Goal 8: Increase understanding of factors that comprise both positive and negative construction safety and health cultures; and, expand the availability and use of effective interventions to maintain safe work practices 100% of the time in the construction industry.
  • Strategic Goal 12: Reduce injury and illness among groups of construction workers through improved understanding of why groups of workers experience disproportionate risks in construction work and expanding the availability and use of effective interventions.
  • Strategic Goal 13: Increase the use of “prevention through design (PtD)” approaches to prevent or reduce safety and health hazards in construction.

Healthcare and Social Assistance

The Healthcare and Social Assistance (HCSA) Sector Program has established the following 5;priority goals for extramural research to be funded in fiscal year 2017. These apply to both human and animal healthcare, which are both included within the program. We encourage proposals addressing home settings and animal healthcare settings, which have been relatively less studied and where there are important occupational safety and health issues that need to be addressed.

  • Strategic Goal 1: Promote safe and healthy workplaces and optimize safety culture in healthcare organizations.
  • Strategic Goal 2: Reduce the incidence and severity of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) among workers in the healthcare and social assistance (HCSA) sector.
  • Strategic Goal 3: Reduce or eliminate exposures and adverse health effects caused by hazardous drugs and other chemicals.
  • Strategic Goal 4: Reduce sharps injuries and their impacts among all healthcare personnel.
  • Strategic Goal 5: STOP transmission of infectious diseases in healthcare and social assistance (HCSA) settings among workers, patients and visitors.

Manufacturing

  • Strategic Goal 1: Reduce the number of injuries and fatalities due to contact with objects and equipment among workers in the manufacturing sector.
  • Strategic Goal 3: Reduce the number and severity of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) among manufacturing sector workers.
  • Strategic Goal 4: Reduce the incidence of occupationally-induced hearing loss in the manufacturing sector.
  • Strategic Goal 7: Reduce the incidence of injuries, illnesses, and fatalities among understudied and vulnerable populations in the manufacturing sector such as contract workers, younger and older workers, immigrants, and pregnant and nursing mothers.
  • Strategic Goal 8: Reduce the incidence of injuries, illnesses, and fatalities within small businesses (less than 100 employees) and specific sub-sectors within the manufacturing sector.
  • Strategic Goal 10: Reduce the number of catastrophic incidents (e.g., explosions, chemical accidents or building structural failures) in the manufacturing sector.

Mining

  • Strategic Goal 1: Reduce mine workers' risk of occupational illness
  • Strategic Goal 2: Reduce mine workers' risk of traumatic injuries and fatalities
  • Strategic Goal 3: Reduce the risk of mine disasters and improve survivability of mine workers

Oil and Gas Extraction

Goals are presented in order of priority (highest to lowest).

  • Strategic Goal 1: Decrease transportation-related injuries and fatalities to oil and gas extraction workers.
  • Strategic Goal 10: Reduce the incidence of injuries, illnesses, and fatalities among workers employed by small companies (less than 100 employees) in the oil and gas extraction industry.
  • Strategic Goal 8: Decrease fatigue-related injuries and fatalities in the oil and gas extraction industry.

Public Safety

Goals are presented in order of priority (highest to lowest).

  • Strategic Goal 15: Identify and implement effective policies among EMS agencies regarding work organization factors to reduce related illnesses and injuries.
  • Strategic Goal 7: Injuries and Fatalities Due to Criminal Assaults: Reduce injuries and fatalities in law enforcement personnel from criminal assaults.
  • Strategic Goal 11: Correction Personnel Stress Factor Reduction: Reduce occupational stressors in corrections personnel.
  • Strategic Goal 17: Reduce injuries associated with wildland fire fighting.
  • Strategic Goal 1: Chronic and Acute Disease Reduction: Reduce the incidence of chronic and acute diseases in firefighters that may be related to occupational exposures such as heat, combustion products, and other stressors.

Services

  • Strategic Goal 2:Reduce the incidence and severity of occupational illnesses and injuries by 20% as measured in number of occupational fatalities or lost work days among building services workers such as janitors, window washers, general building maintenance, and landscape services workers.
  • Strategic Goal 9 Reduce traumatic injuries and fatalities by 30% in the recreation and entertainment industries.
  • Strategic Goal 10: Reduce the frequency of injuries by 30% among food service workers.
  • Strategic Goal 11: By 2015, reduce the frequency of workplace violence events by 20% in restaurants and food delivery services.
  • Strategic Goal 14: Reduce the incidence by 30% and severity of injuries and illnesses among workers who are employees of temporary labor agencies or otherwise employed as contractors or contingent workers by 2015.

Transportation, Warehousing and Utilities

  • Strategic Goal 1: Reduce lost-workday occupational traumatic injury and fatality rates in the TWU sector.
  • Strategic Goal 3: Improve health and reduce premature mortality among TWU workers through workplace programs and practices that (1) enable workers to engage in healthy behaviors, (2) reduce work-related physiological and psychological stressors, and (3) improve healthcare utilization.

Wholesale and Retail Trade

  • Strategic Goal 1: Reduce chronic musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in wholesale and retail trade (WRT) workers.
  • Strategic Goal 5: Improve outreach to the small businesses within the wholesale and retail trade sector, which account for nearly 65% of the WRT workforce, by providing access to current occupational safety and health information.
  • Strategic Goal 6: Increase our understanding of how vulnerable/contingent worker groups experience disproportionate risks in wholesale and retail jobs and expand the availability and use of effective interventions to reduce injuries and illnesses among these groups.

Cancer, Reproductive and Cardiovascular Diseases

  • Strategic Goal 1: Reduce the incidence of work-related cancer.
  • Strategic Goal 3: Reduce the incidence of work-related adverse reproductive outcomes.
  • Strategic Goal 4: Reduce the incidence and mortality of work-related cardiovascular disease.

Hearing Loss Prevention

  • Strategic Goal 2: Reduce noise emission levels from equipment.
  • Strategic Goal 3: Develop hearing protector technology.
  • Strategic Goal 4: Develop best practices for hearing loss prevention programs.

Immune, Infectious and Dermal Disease Prevention

Dermal Disease Prevention

  • Strategic Goal 1: Contribute to the reduction of occupational skin disease.

Immune Disease Prevention

  • Strategic Goal 1: Contribute to the reduction of immune abnormalities associated with workplace exposures.

Musculoskeletal Health

  • Strategic Goal 1: Identify unique sources of surveillance data to identify the areas of needed musculoskeletal research.
  • Strategic Goal 2: Reduce the incidence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders by implementing cost-effective workplace interventions to reduce musculoskeletal health risk factors
  • Strategic Goal 3: Reduce the incidence of work-related MSDs through widespread and targeted dissemination and communication of safety and health information and effective education and training.

Respiratory Diseases

  • Strategic Goal 1: Prevent and reduce work-related airways diseases.
  • Strategic Goal 5: Advance cross-cutting issues that affect all work-related respiratory diseases, in particular surveillance, exposure assessment, and emerging issues.

Traumatic Injury

  • Strategic Goal 1: Reduce fall injuries in the workplace.
  • Strategic Goal 2: Reduce occupational injuries and deaths due to motor vehicle incidents and crashes.
  • Strategic Goal 3: Reduce occupational injuries and deaths due to workplace violence.
  • Strategic Goal 4: Reduce occupational injuries and deaths due to machines and industrial vehicles.
  • Strategic Goal 5: Reduce occupational injuries and deaths among high risk and vulnerable worker groups.

Healthy Work Design and Well-Being

Economics

  • Strategic Goal 1: Increase investment in prevention efforts that result in the biggest improvement in worker safety and health for the least cost
  • Strategic Goal 2: Reduce the adverse impact of economic factors on the incidence and severity of worker injury and illness

Total Worker Health

  • Strategic Goal 1: Advance and conduct etiologic, surveillance, and intervention re­search that builds the evidence base for effectively integrating protection from work-related safety and health hazards with promotion of injury and illness prevention efforts to advance worker well-being.
  • Strategic Goal 2: Increase the implementation of evidence-based programs and prac­tices that integrate protection from work-related safety and health hazards with promotion of injury and illness prevention efforts to advance worker well-being.

Work Organization and Stress Related Disorders

  • Strategic Goal 1: Improve the health and safety of working people through research and surveillance to better understand work organization exposures and their associations with health and safety outcomes.
  • Strategic Goal 2: Improve the health and safety of working people through intervention studies and guidance to improve the organization of work.
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