Core Occupational Health Surveillance in Massachusetts

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DESCRIPTION: Work-related injuries and illnesses are a significant public health problem in the United States, imposing substantial human and economic costs. Surveillance of work-related illnesses, injuries and hazards is essential to establish research priorities and to target, design and evaluate prevention efforts. Surveillance is needed at the state and local as well as national levels. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) proposes to develop, implement, and evaluate a core occupational health surveillance program to promote prevention at the state and local levels that can serve as a model for other states. This core program will include surveillance of multiple occupational health/ hazard endpoints. The specific aims of the proposed project are as follows, falling into four major categories: Sentinel Event Surveillance: 1) refine the list of high priority occupational health conditions that should be placed under sentinel case surveillance in all states; 2) develop surveillance protocols for high priority conditions and implement surveillance in Massachusetts; 3) evaluate prevention impact of sentinel event surveillance activities, and revise model core program; Population-based Surveillance: 4) describe existing population-based sources of data on health conditions, hazards and the worker populations-at-risk that may be used for occupational health surveillance at the state and local levels; 5) conduct analyses of priority data sets; prepare and disseminate surveillance reports; 6) assess the relative utility of these different population-based approaches to surveillance, and propose schedule of core population-based surveillance activities; Intervention and Prevention: 7) continue and expand working relationships with prevention partners to promote use of surveillance findings for public health action at the state and local levels; 8) develop mechanisms to improve dissemination and use of surveillance findings; Regional Collaboration: 9) work with other states in the Northeast to obtain their input in defining core occupational health surveillance functions and to promote the development of state occupational health surveillance capacity; 10) produce a set of written "surveillance tools" that can be used/adapted by other states working to build core programs. MDPH will work with NIOSH State Occupational Surveillance Consortium in developing a final report and set of consensus recommendations regarding core occupational health surveillance activities in the states.