A Smarter National Surveillance System for Occupational Safety and Health in the 21st Century (2018) / Chapter Skim
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3 Overview of Agencies and Stakeholders
3 Overview of Agencies and Stakeholders
Pages 43-72
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From page 43... ...
State agencies also play a critical and complementary role in partnership with federal agencies. State agencies collect, analyze, and disseminate data from local sources to guide preventive action at the state, regional, and local levels; provide data to federal agencies to be aggregated for national surveillance; and fill in gaps in national surveillance data.
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From page 44... ...
. The inadequacies in workplace health and safety statistics and the need for an accurate uniform data reporting system for work-related injuries and illnesses were well recognized in the development of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (P.L.
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From page 45... ...
CFOI and SOII are further described in Chapter 4. BLS has a number of additional OSH surveillance initiatives that include, among others, examining the extent and factors contributing to undercounting in the SOII, exploring the feasibility of a nationwide household survey on nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses, and developing electronic tools for assigning standardized codes to narrative text information in occupational health and safety data sources (see further details in Chapters 4 and 6)
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From page 46... ...
Therefore, OSHA is not able to use the BLS collected data for regulatory or enforcement purposes and, as discussed below and in Chapter 6, has established a separate parallel collection system to seek similar establishment-level injury and illness data from employers. OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION OSHA was created by the OSH Act of 1970.
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From page 47... ...
These reports also form the basis for the SOII. Employers in industries with a lower risk of serious injuries are exempt from these OSHA recordkeeping requirements, but may be required to participate in the BLS survey.5 3 he OSH Act provides that employees excluded from OSHA's regulatory and enforcement T coverage may be included in data collection and statistical programs.
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From page 48... ...
. This electronic injury reporting system is similar to the OSHA Data Initiative but covers a larger number of employers and requires the submission of more detailed injury and illness information from larger employers.
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From page 49... ...
– Employer fatality, injury, and CFOI NOMS – Workplace injury logs and records illness records and reports CSELS NORMS – Fatality reports – Exposure records Other Related CFID NCCDP – Severe injury reporting – MSHA inspection data NCHS Surveys FOG BRFSS – Electronic injury reporting NHIS/NHANES FACE Exposure records CPS SENSOR Vital records, ACS CWHSP etc. ORS Other injury and illness reports HHE State Health Departments UI NEISS CPSC State Labor Departments QCEW Other State Agencies State OSHA Plans (e.g., health departments)
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From page 50... ...
." In Section 24, the statistics section, NIOSH is given a consultative role to provide input to the Secretary of Labor to "develop and maintain an effective program of collection, compilation, and analysis of occupational safety and health statistics." NIOSH is also charged to work in cooperation with the Department of Labor on the development of injury and illnesses recording and reporting regulations. Under the Mine Safety and Health Act, NIOSH has specific responsibilities related to mine safety and health.
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From page 51... ...
NIOSH currently has a multipronged strategy to address disease and injury surveillance needs that includes • Leveraging existing surveys and data systems managed by other agencies, • Building occupational health surveillance capacity at the state level, • Incorporating industry and occupation into existing surveys and other data systems, • Improving the capacity and accuracy of autocoding tools essential to fully implement the above strategies, and • Accelerating communication for prevention (Schnorr, 2016)
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From page 52... ...
NIOSH conducts health hazard evaluations which provide useful information about workplace exposures and related health impacts. NIOSH also develops and disseminates hazard alerts, sometimes jointly with OSHA, to provide information about recently identified occupational health and safety problems and exposures of particular concern, and recommend controls measures.
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From page 53... ...
Among these are many other centers and programs within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (e.g., the National Center for Health Statistics, the National Program of Cancer Registries, and the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System) , the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (see Box 3-1 and Chapters 4 and 6)
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From page 54... ...
While national surveillance is essential to set national prevention and research priorities and inform federal policy development, state-specific occupational health and safety problems can be obscured in national statistics,
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From page 55... ...
Several supplemental modules have been developed and funded by NIOSH that focus on collecting occupational health data. Consumer Product Safety Commission • The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System is a national prob ability sample of hospitals in the United States that collects data from emergency room visits involving injuries from consumer products.
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From page 56... ...
56 A SMARTER NATIONAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM BOX 3-2 Examples of State Health Data Sources Used for Occupational Health and Safety Surveillance Case Reports • Health care providers • Hospitals and emergency departments • Clinical laboratories • Poison control centers Administrative Data • Hospital discharge data • Emergency department data • Hospital outpatient data • Emergency medical service data • Workers' compensation data State Registries • Birth and death data • Cancer registries • Birth defect registries • Trauma registries • Burn registries Surveys and Other Public Health Surveillance Systems • State SOII data • Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System • Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System • Other state-specific health surveys • State infectious disease surveillance systems • State syndromic surveillance systems • State violent death reporting systems Other Sources • Media searches • OSHA records • Coast Guard records • Autopsy reports Potential New Sources • All payer claims data • Electronic health records
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From page 57... ...
At minimum, these states are working to generate the standardized occupational health indicators and build working relationships for prevention with OSH and other state public health stakeholders (Thomsen et al.,
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From page 58... ...
58 FIGURE 3-2 NIOSH-sponsored state occupational health and safety surveillance programs. SOURCE: Inserra, 2016.
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From page 59... ...
. Seven states conduct "expanded" surveillance activities focused on targeted health outcomes, industries, or populations.8 Some state OSH surveillance programs also partner with other public health programs to develop more comprehensive approaches to problems, such as indoor air and chemical exposures in schools, distracted driving, infectious diseases, and, more recently, opioid overdoses, that can affect workers and the general public alike (Davis and Souza, 2009)
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From page 60... ...
To further promote and improve worker safety and health, some companies go beyond the basic regulations to focus on how best to identify potential hazards in their specific area of work and to track their safety record. Some companies conduct extensive surveillance, linking OSHA injury records with medical reports, workers' compensation reports, and other data to identify hazards and emerging problems and to track progress.
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From page 61... ...
. The "Just Culture" notion differs from the "no blame culture" in that the former stresses that safety compliance and prevention would be based on a problem-solving approach (i.e., engagement, root-cause analysis, transparency, and information exchange)
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From page 62... ...
FEDERAL AND STATE AGENCY COORDINATION, COLLABORATION, INFORMATION EXCHANGE, AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT ON OSH SURVEILLANCE Ideally, the OSH surveillance activities of BLS, OSHA, NIOSH, other federal agencies, and state agencies would be carried out under the framework of a national OSH surveillance strategy and through a unified surveillance system, with close coordination and collaboration on the development of strategy, planning, implementation, and evaluation. However, currently there is no overall strategy, single system, or overall formal body responsible for coordination or integration of OSH surveillance activities and programs.
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From page 63... ...
Coordination and Collaboration Among NIOSH and Other CDC and HHS Agencies Underlying the accomplishments and challenges in current OSH surveillance efforts is the relationship between NIOSH and CDC. As escribed, NIOSH was created by the Occupational Safety and Health Act d
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From page 64... ...
Historically, it has been difficult for NIOSH to integrate occupational safety and health into other CDC and HHS programs, and occupational health and safety has not received strong support from HHS or CDC. In recent years NIOSH has made some strides to initiate increased collaboration and activity with other CDC and HHS agencies in a wide range of surveillance programs and activities.
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From page 65... ...
As resources permit, BLS holds a national conference with state partners and participates in annual meetings with NIOSH-funded statebased surveillance programs and CSTE. Through OSHA's formal relationship with the 26 OSHA state plan states, the states input their inspection data into the OSHA Information System, creating a unified national database with inspection and violation data and severe injury and fatality reports.
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From page 66... ...
In sum, there is strong collaboration between NIOSH and state-based surveillance programs that could be enhanced with additional state collaboration with NIOSH intramural researchers. State public health collaboration with the national OSHA and BLS offices has increased in recent years but remains largely informal (outside of several BLS-funded surveillance research grants to states)
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From page 67... ...
NIOSH has formal and informal methods of obtaining stakeholder input on surveillance activities, including the NORA industry-sector and cross-sector councils, which reflect a mix of internal and external stakeholders. Many of the state OSH surveillance programs are actively engaged with industry, labor, and other community stakeholders at the state and local levels.
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From page 68... ...
Overall, the state of OSH surveillance has improved since the 1987 report, but significant gaps and barriers to achieving comprehensive OSH surveillance remain. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Occupational safety and health surveillance in the United States is a collaborative, decentralized effort carried out by a large number of federal and state agencies with the substantial involvement of BLS, OSHA, NIOSH, MSHA, and state health and labor departments.
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From page 69... ...
Presentation to the National Acade mies Committee on Developing a Smarter National Surveillance System for Occupational Safety and Health in the 21st Century, September 21. Available online at https://vimeo.
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From page 70... ...
2015. The quest for meaningful and accurate occupational health and safety statis tics.
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From page 71... ...
2015. National Health Interview Survey: Occupational Health Supplement.
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From page 72... ...
Presentation to the National Academies Committee on Developing a Smarter National Surveillance System for Occupational Safety and Health in the 21st Century, September 21. Available online at https://vimeo.com/187718132 (accessed July 10, 2017)
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