Board of Directors
As an incorporated, non-profit organization, the Institute for Work and Health (IWH) is governed by a tri-partite Board of Directors.
The IWH Board of Directors plays a vital role in stewarding the Institute, championing its work and ensuring it delivers on its mission and strategic directions. The Board is legally responsible for the stewardship of IWH. It fulfills this responsibility by establishing governance and risk management strategies to ensure delivery on the mission and strategic directions of IWH in a manner consistent with its values. The Board delegates responsibility for general management and operations of IWH to the President.
Learn more about our board members
Scientific Advisory Committee
The Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) is a standing committee of the IWH Board of Directors.
Members of the SAC are usually selected from the broader international researcher community and are well-recognized for their peer-reviewed research on the linkages between work and health. SAC members are appointed to an initial term of three years and can serve a maximum of three consecutive terms for total of nine years.
The key responsibility of the SAC is to review and make recommendations to the Board and President of the Institute regarding the direction, scope and focus of the Institute’s research. In their recommendations, SAC members consider independence of research; breadth of research; merit and quality of research themes; recruitment of scientific staff to IWH; research network development; integration of research; and knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE) activities.
Learn more about our SAC members
Our funding
The Institute for Work & Health operates with core funding from the Province of Ontario. The stewardship of this funding lies with the Ontario Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development (MLITSD). At the beginning, from its origins in 1990 to the end of 2012, the Institute operated with core funding support from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).
The Institute has an arm's-length relationship with the MLITSD, as it did previously with the WSIB. Although the core funder approves a general budget plan, the specifics of our research agenda, as well as how we conduct and report on our research, are all determined by IWH independently of our core funder. Three principles included in the preamble to our core funding agreement with the Ministry make this clear. The principles say IWH will:
- focus on research questions aligned to the mandate of the Province and to the protection of the health of workers in the Ontario labour market;
- be impartial in relationships with governmental or Crown agencies, employers, workers, clinicians and other interests in the Ontario labour market; and
- have independent authority to ensure research is conducted with integrity with respect to the principles of scientific excellence.
In addition to our core funding, IWH scientists are also awarded grants from funding agencies across North America. Among these are the WorkSafeBC, Manitoba Workers Compensation Board, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). These grants are awarded through a peer-review process.