What’s Work Got to Do With It? NIOSH to Co-sponsor Pathways to Prevention Workshop: Total Worker Health

Press Office Contact: Nura Sadeghpour (202) 245-0673

What's Work Got to do With It?
NIOSH to Co-sponsor Pathways to Prevention Workshop: Total Worker Health^®
December 9-10, 2015

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Office for Total Worker Health^® (TWH), along with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Disease Prevention (ODP) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) will co-sponsor a workshop evaluating the current state of knowledge on integrated approaches to worker safety, health, and well-being, December 9-10, 2015. The workshop is titled, Pathways to Prevention: Total Worker Health^® --What’s Work Got to Do With It? and is free and open to the public.

One hundred forty-five million Americans are workers, and many spend at least 50% of their active time at the workplace. Despite improvements in occupational safety and health over the last several decades, there continues to be work-related illnesse, injury, and death. To most effectively prevent injury, enhance safety and health interventions, lengthen productive life, reduce illness and disability, and return people to the workforce, it is important to expand beyond the traditional prevention strategies. Total Worker Health strives to do just that. The workshop will explore these relationships and opportunities.

Total Worker Health is defined as policies, 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. This integrated approach recognizes that risk factors in the workplace can contribute to many health problems previously considered unrelated to work, including cardiovascular disease, obesity, depression, and sleep disorders. Therefore, the benefits and synergistic possibilities of an integrated approach, with the worker as the centerpiece, can safeguard and grow worker well-being.

To better understand the benefits of an integrated approach, NIOSH/TWH and NIH are engaged in exploring the scientific evidence that supports these strategies. The NIH-TWH workshop will look at the many ways that work itself can impact safety and health and will seek to clarify the following questions:

• What studies exist assessing integrated interventions?
• What are the known benefits and harms of integrated interventions?
• What are the characteristics of effective integrated/combined interventions and programs?
• What factors influence the effectiveness of integrated interventions?
• What are the key evidence gaps?

Pathways to Prevention: Total Worker Health --What’s Work Got to Do With It? –will take place on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland: Masur Auditorium, NIH Clinical Center building, 10 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892. For more information or to register, visit https://prevention.nih.gov/programs-events/pathways-to-prevention/workshops/total-worker-health. Continuing Education Units are available for in-person attendees.

To find out more about the Total Worker Health Program and its work within NIOSH, please visit http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/TWH/.

NIOSH is the federal agency that conducts research and makes recommendations for preventing work-related injuries, illnesses and deaths. For more information, visit www.cdc.gov/niosh.