Return to work, accommodation and support

The seven-year partnership project, titled Accommodating and Communicating about Episodic Disabilities (ACED), showcases the role partner organizations can play in developing user-friendly research products and in disseminating these products more widely. The partnership enhanced both the quality of the research and the partners’ ability to serve their clients.

Published: August 2025

An IWH study has found that Ontario health-care providers face a range of challenges when treating workers with a work-related injury or illness and helping them return to work—from communication issues with compensation boards to the complexities of working with multiple parties. The researchers also found that a telementoring program called ECHO Occupational Environmental Medicine helped providers overcome some of these challenges.

Published: July 2025

Published: Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, May 2025

Workers with a work-related physical injury that takes them off the job can have a wide range of mental health experiences, beyond diagnosable conditions. That’s according to an IWH study which also found that differences in workers’ mental health after an injury were linked to return-to-work outcomes. Those reporting both a mental health condition and the poorest wellbeing had longer, more expensive compensation claims.

Published: April 2025

Job disruptions are common among workers living with chronic physical and/or mental health conditions, an IWH study has found. The study investigated the effects of workplace supports had on four types of job disruptions.

Published: March 2025

Severe pain is the main factor associated with opioid use after a work-related injury, regardless of the employee’s return-to-work timeline, a recent study out of Canada suggests. Findings show that 35.6 per cent of the workers used opioids more than once in the past year. However, those who experienced severe post-injury pain were nearly three times more likely to use opioids than the participants who had mild or zero pain.

Published: Safety+Health, March 2025

An IWH study found that among a group of injured workers in Ontario, those who experienced severe pain were more likely to use opioids than those who had no or only mild pain—regardless of whether they felt they had to return to work too soon, or were offered work accommodations.

Published: February 2025

People who have previously experienced a work-related injury are more likely to experience opioid poisonings and other opioid-related harms than the general population. That’s according to research conducted by the Institute for Work & Health (IWH) and the Occupational Cancer Research Centre (OCRC), using data from 1.7 million Ontario workers who had an accepted lost-time workers’ compensation claim between 1983 and 2019.

Published: Rehab & Community Care Medicine , February 2025

Published: Occupational and Environmental Medicine, February 2025

Mental health is often thought of as the presence or absence of a mental health condition such as depression or an anxiety disorder. However, the complete mental health model suggests that mental health is also comprised of one’s level of emotional, psychological and social wellbeing. How does this holistic way of framing mental health help us understand the return-to-work experiences of injured workers? In this presentation, Dr. Kathleen Dobson shares results from a recent study examining various mental health profiles among a group of physically injured workers in Ontario. She discusses why it is important to define “mental health” in occupational research, how this framework helps highlight the diverse mental health experiences that injured workers have and how these experiences may impact their return to work.

Published: January 2025