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
IWH Speaker Series
How new businesses get their start in workplace health and safety: implications for research and policy
Published: April 21, 2026
At Work article
IWH study reveals gaps in health and safety knowledge about new businesses
To best prevent injuries, OHS management in small businesses should start early in their lifecycle. But according to a new IWH study, few programs or policies are specifically aimed at helping new businesses start managing OHS.
Published: April 10, 2026
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
Project report
Project report
Benchmarking organizational leading indicators for the prevention and management of injuries and illnesses: final report
Can a simple tool be developed that will predict a firm’s workplace injury experience based on an assessment of its health and safety policies and practices? This was the question that a team of partners within Ontario's occupational health and safety (OHS) system set out to answer, and it looks like the answer is “yes.” This report describes the team's work developing these potential OHS leading indicators.
Published: January 2011