Dr. Peter Smith
Dr. Peter Smith is president and senior scientist at the Institute for Work & Health (IWH) in Toronto, and a professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Prior to moving into the president's role in January 2022, Smith was IWH's scientific co-director.
Smith has a master's in public health from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and a PhD from the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto. He is a former recipient of a New Investigator Award (2008-2013) from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR),a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council (2012-2014), and a five-year CIHR Research Chair in Gender, Work and Health (2014-2018).
Smith has extensive experience conducting research related to work injury and its consequences using large population-based surveys and administrative workers' compensation data. His key research interests include: gender and sex differences in the relationship between work and health; labour market inequalities and their health-related outcomes; labour market experiences of newcomers, older workers, younger workers and other vulnerable labour force subgroups; chronic illnesses and work injury; and trends in working conditions over time.
“I don’t understand how people can think about health without thinking about work. Between our early 20s and our 60s – and later for some people – we spend most of our waking hours at work. It makes sense, then, that aspects of work must have an impact on different aspects of our health, both positively and negatively. That drives me to better understand what good work and bad work look like from a health and return-to-work perspective.” – Dr. Peter Smith
Projects
- Transitioning to the future of work: an intersectional study of vulnerable youth and young adults. Funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Ongoing.
- Trends in the severity of work-related injury in Ontario. Funded by Ontario Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development (MLITSD). Ongoing.
- Understanding the activity patterns of Canadians at work and outside of work, and their association with overall health. Funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Ongoing.
- Understanding the injury experience of Ontario small businesses through workers’ compensation claims data. Funded by Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development (MLITSD). Ongoing.
- Using decision-tree machine learning to identify worker movement typologies . Ongoing.
Publications
- Fagerlind Stahl AC, Stahl C, Smith PM. Longitudinal association between psychological demands and burnout for employees experiencing a high versus a low degree of job resources. BMC Public Health. 2018;18(1):915. doi:10.1186/s12889-018-5778-x.
- Cocker F, Sim MR, Kelsall H, Smith PM. The association between time taken to report, lodge, and start wage replacement and return-to-work outcomes. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. 2018;60(7):622-630. doi:10.1097/JOM.0000000000001294.
- Lanthier S, Bielecky A, Smith PM. Examining risk of workplace violence in Canada: a sex/gender-based analysis. Annals of Work Exposures and Health. 2018;62(8):1012-1020. doi:10.1093/annweh/wxy066.
- Fan J, Smith PM. Self-reported work conditions in Canada: examining changes between 2002 and 2012. Canadian Journal of Public Health. 2018;109:882-890. doi:10.17269/s41997-018-0096-8.
- Lane TJ, Lilley R, Hogg-Johnson S, LaMontagne AD, Sim MR, Smith PM. A prospective cohort study of the impact of return-to-work coordinators in getting injured workers back on the job. Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation. 2018;28(2):298-306. doi:10.1007/s10926-017-9719-9.
Speaker Series presentations
- Reporting and consequences of workplace violence in six Ontario hospitals. IWH Speaker Series. May 22, 2018.
- Towards a better understanding of differences in the risk of workplace violence for men and women in Canada. IWH Speaker Series. March 27, 2018.
- Evaluating the impact of mandatory awareness training in Ontario. IWH Speaker Series. April 11, 2017.
- Understanding return to work in MSD claims versus psychological injuries, for younger workers versus older workers. IWH Speaker Series. September 29, 2015.
- Developing a measure of OHS vulnerability. IWH Speaker Series. January 20, 2015.
Interviews and articles
- IWH Updates. At Work: Institute for Work & Health; No. 91, Winter 2018.
- IWH study examines effect of Ontario’s mandatory OHS training on awareness. At Work: Institute for Work & Health; No. 89, Summer 2017.
- Standing too long at work carries twice the risk of heart disease as sitting too long. At Work: Institute for Work & Health; No. 90, Fall 2017.
- Study on prolonged standing and heart disease: Setting the record straight. At Work: Institute for Work & Health; No. 90, Fall 2017.
- No, a standing desk isn't as unhealthy as smoking. The Guardian: Guardian News and Media (London). September 21, 2017. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/science/sifting-the-evidence/2017/sep/21/no-a-standing-desk-isnt-as-unhealthy-as-smoking