Illness/injury prevention
IWH has a long history of conducting research to provide practical guidance to employers, workers, OHS professionals and regulators about what works and what doesn’t in injury or illness prevention. This research targets the injury and illness prevention practices of workplaces, as well as the programs developed by governments, health and safety associations and others to support and motivate workplaces to adopt effective practices.
Featured
At Work article
Consultants play key role in OHS implementation at small firms
An IWH study of small businesses that took part in Ontario's Health and Safety Excellence Program highlights the key factors that contribute their success in the program.
Published: November 8, 2024
At Work article
Higher risk of work injuries found among those in precarious jobs: IWH study
Workers in jobs likely to be precarious are more likely to experience a work-related injury or illness in Ontario, including COVID-19. That’s according to a pair of studies that examined whether employment conditions are linked to the rate of work injuries.
Published: September 12, 2024
Issue Briefing
Developing leading indicators of work injury and illness
Leading indicators have the potential to help identify factors affecting the risk of injury, allowing workplaces to address these factors before injuries occur. This Issue Briefing looks at efforts to date to identify OHS leading indicators and the challenges involved.
Published: October 2013
At Work article
At Work article
New Brunswick’s WorkSafeNB adopts IWH’s safety culture yardstick
Institute of Work & Health’s Organizational Performance Metric chosen after study shows firms’ scores on eight-item questionnaire correlate with claims rates
Published: July 2013
Project report
Project report
Assessment of the utility of WorkSafeNB's Internal Responsibility System Questionnaire and IWH's Organizational Performance Metric: public report
In 2010, WorkSafeNB asked the Institute for Work and Health (IWH) to assess its Internal Responsibility System Questionnaire (IRSQ), a survey tool it had developed to measure safety culture within an organization. As part of its assessment, IWH compared the IRSQ with another previously validated tool designed to measure leading indicators, called the IWH Organizational Performance Metric (IWH-OPM). This document reports on the assessment of these two tools.
Published: July 2013
Journal article
Journal article
Response to Weinstock and Slatin's (2012) critique of IWH-NIOSH systematic review of the effectiveness of OSH training
Published: New Solutions, January 2013
Project
Project
Assessing the human and economic burden of workplace cancer in Canada
Status: Completed 2020
At Work article
At Work article
Breakthrough change: Finding and describing firms that make large OHS improvements
What changes, why and who’s driving the change in firms that make large improvements in workplace health and safety? Possible answers are coming from the first phase of an ongoing study at the Institute for Work & Health that is exploring the process of “breakthrough change.”
Published: October 2012
Issue Briefing
Effectiveness of targeted OHS labour inspections
This Issue Briefing takes a close look at the design and outcomes of three North American studies and how they inform our understanding of the effectiveness of targeted labour inspections on occupational health and safety (OHS) outcomes.
Published: September 2012
Journal article
Journal article
A systematic review of the effectiveness of occupational health and safety training
Published: Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health, January 2012
Project
Project
Developing a framework for understanding and measuring OHS vulnerability
IWH researchers looked for a better way to measure occupational health and safety (OHS) vulnerability among workers, one that moves beyond the demographic characteristics of workers to look at the factors in their workplaces that put them at increased risk of injury and illness.
Status: Completed 2016
Impact case study
Expert panel reshapes Ontario's OHS system
IWH scientists support the work of the Dean panel with "trusted" and "balanced" research and analysis.
Published: July 2011