NIOSH State-Based Occupational Safety and Health Surveillance

Details

• Personal Author:
  Anderson HA ; Tomasallo C
• Description:
  Wisconsin maintains a fundamental occupational disease and injury surveillance program within the Bureau of Environmental and Occupational Health (BEOH) in the Division of Public Health, Department of Health Services (DHS). These cooperative agreement funds have enabled the Wisconsin Occupational Health (OH) Program to dedicate one full-time professional staff to maintain core occupational disease and injury surveillance. The program manager serves as the strategic focal point to promote integration of occupational health into all Wisconsin's public health programs leveraging state and local public health capabilities, partnerships, and capacity to reduce occupationally-related injuries and death. The Wisconsin OH Program annually contributes all 22 Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE)/NIOSH occupational health indicators (OHI) to the NIOSH national surveillance system and actively collaborates with NIOSH and the other states' occupational health programs. The OHI showed that some specific Wisconsin industry sectors and occupation groups (construction, manufacturing, and agriculture) have rates of injury and illness that are higher than the national average and therefore deserved priority programmatic attention while other indicator data showed stable or decreasing rates for many occupational health injuries and illnesses. The OH Program developed innovative approaches to augment and enhance available surveillance data. Data use agreements were negotiated and in 2013 the program began utilizing National Poison Data System (NPDS) data to track work-related carbon monoxide poisonings and pesticide exposures. Also, a data sharing agreement was finalized that allowed access to Wisconsin Workers' Compensation (WC) claims data. The program collaborated with the Wisconsin Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) to add work-related asthma questions to the Adult Asthma Call-Back Survey (ACBS) in 2006 and the industry/occupation (I/O) module to the BRFSS Survey in 2013. The program strengthened and expanded its data sharing partnerships through quarterly meetings of its multi-agency, interdisciplinary Occupational Surveillance Advisory Group (OSAG). Small seed grants to local and tribal county health departments and community-based organizations have proven an effective strategy to focus local OH capacity building in Wisconsin. During 2013-2014 and 2014-2015, the OH Program implemented a competitive small grant process to support community-based occupational health and safety interventions. The nine funded projects' topics ranged from agricultural safety trainings for farmers and first responders to working with large employers to incorporate occupational health into workplace wellness programs. These local activities led to an effective proposal to further engage the Workplace Wellness initiatives across the state to create occupational safety and health components. Occupational health and safety for youth was a focus area through this grant period for education and outreach. One project included collaboration with Operation Fresh Start, a non-profit service organization that combines education and work experience for "at risk" youth. In addition, the OH Program developed a curriculum for high school education on young worker safety using the NIOSH curriculum as guidance. This curriculum was shared with the Safe-Skilled-Ready Workforce Initiative at NIOSH and implemented in 2014-2015. The NIOSH cooperative agreement has allowed Wisconsin to build a more robust and diverse surveillance data system to support occupational disease and injury prevention. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Agriculture Asthma, Occupational Construction Industry Manufacturing And Industrial Facilities Occupational Diseases Occupational Health Public Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Community Based Construction Injuries Injury Prevention Manufacturing Occupational Asthma Occupational Diseases Occupational Health Programs Occupational Safety Programs Public Health Surveillance Programs Young Workers

  More +
• Series:
  Grant Final Reports
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Cooperative Agreement
• Genre:
  Final Cooperative Agreement Report
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 5 ; Wisconsin
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  OEP - Office of Extramural Programs
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-21
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20061307
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB2022-100354
• Citation:
  Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, U60-OH-008484, 2015 Sep; :1-21
• Email:
  Henry.Anderson@WI.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2015
• Performing Organization:
  Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• End Date:
  20150630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:c23d701e49ed664ef5e17ec94e7e46164bc2421a8e52efce2b2e703a549dd7f001731e39b726754eda93826242afe322d4dc29a02dad220fed2c115f78520de5
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/219026/cdc_219026_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 268.14 KB ]