NIOSH Awards 23 Cooperative Agreements to States for Work Injury, Illnesss Surveillance, Including 9 New

Contact: Fred Blosser, (202) 245-0645
August 23, 2010

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) announced funding for cooperative agreements with 23 states for occupational injury and illness surveillance. The awards include renewals for 14 previously funded state programs, and new awards to nine additional state programs.

The competitive awards total $6.5 million per year for five years, and will fund occupational injury and illness surveillance programs in the 23 states for a five-year total of $32.5 million.

The nine states that received new competitive awards are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. The 14 states that successfully competed for renewals are California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin.

"State-based health surveillance provides critical information for tracking the incidence of occupational injuries and illnesses, identifying trends, understanding risk factors, and recognizing new and emerging problems," said NIOSH Director John Howard, M.D. "We are pleased that we were able to increase competitive funding for Fiscal 2010 by 25 percent, and to increase the number of states with which we have agreements."

All of the nine new awards and five of the competitively renewed awards (Connecticut, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas, and Wisconsin) will fund fundamental occupational health surveillance programs. In those programs, participating states use existing data sets to conduct work-related injury and illness surveillance, based on a standard set of health indicators.

Nine states (California, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington) were approved to conduct expanded programs. These programs will conduct not only basic surveillance, but also more in-depth surveillance associated with health conditions, injuries, or hazards that represent special priorities for the individual state.

Applications from states were received in September 2009, external peer review was conducted in December 2009, and NIOSH secondary review was completed in February 2010, resulting in grant awards made in June 2010.

Further information about accomplishments by state programs, and impacts by the programs in protecting workers from injury and illness, can be found at the web page for NIOSH-supported state surveillance activities, -SBS Annual Performance Reports, July 2007-June 2008,- at http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/oep/reports.html.