Illness/injury prevention

Published: Occupational and Environmental Medicine, August 2024

Past research in occupational health and safety, including studies conducted at IWH, has shown a general decline in rates of work-related injuries in Ontario over the past two decades. But a new IWH study, based on emergency department records from 2004 to 2017, shows that when it comes to very severe injuries, no such decline was seen among men. It also finds an increase of 18 per cent among women.

Published: July 2024

About 100,000 new businesses with one or more employees are created each year in Canada. Almost all start out as small businesses, which have been shown to carry high risks of injuries and fatalities. This study sets out to understand how occupational health and safety management is initiated by new businesses. Its aim is to fill in a research gap and help the prevention system in Ontario reach and support new businesses early in their lifecycle.

Status: Ongoing

This study sets out to evaluate the implementation of an accommodation and reintegration program at a major urban police service. The goal is to improve program access and participation and, ultimately, the well-being of police officers.

Status: Ongoing

Published: Labour, June 2024

Published: American Journal of Industrial Medicine, May 2024

Published: Canadian Journal of Public Health, April 2024

A key program from Construction Health and Safety New Zealand—developed using IWH research—takes a participatory ergonomics approach to better prevent and manage musculoskeletal injuries among construction workers.

Published: February 2024

Precarious employment has become more common in the Canadian labour market, as well as in the labour markets of other high-income countries. In this presentation, Dr. Faraz Vahid Shahidi examines the consequences of precarious employment for health and safety at work. Drawing on compensation claims data from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board and labour force estimates from Statistics Canada, Dr. Shahidi asks whether workers exposed to precarious employment – such as temporary, part-time, and low-wage jobs – are more likely to experience an occupational injury or illness. As a further source of evidence, he also assesses the impact of precarious employment on the workplace transmission of COVID-19.

Published: February 2024

To what extent did workplace exposures account for the transmission of the COVID-19 virus during the first two years of the pandemic? A new study by IWH combined data sources to estimate work-related infection rates, using a method that took into account major shifts in where people worked. It found the role of work exposure changed from wave to wave, in a dynamic pattern not in keeping with the number of cases in the general population.

Published: February 2024