EDITORIAL

Incorporating work organisation into occupational health research: an invitation for dialogue

L A MacDonald¹, A Härenstam², N D Warren³, L Punnett⁴

¹ National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Cincinnati, OH, USA
² Department of Work Science, Göteborg University, Sweden
³ Division of Public Health and Population Sciences, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, CT, USA
⁴ Department of Work Environment, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA, USA

Correspondence to:
Dr L MacDonald, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 4676 Columbia Parkway, Cincinnati, OH 45226, USA; lmacdonald@cdc.gov

Accepted 24 July 2007

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The last decade has seen a lively debate emerge about the proper scope of public health research and the value of examining broad social and environmental factors as interacting determinants of morbidity and mortality.^{1 2} In occupational health and safety, the broader socio-ecological system of most obvious interest is that of the organisations in which workers are employed. However, occupational health researchers have been slow to incorporate broader workplace features into their exposure assessment protocols and epidemiological study designs. The dominant exposure paradigm remains largely confined to the characterisation of risk factors at the job level (fig 1, arrow B). While application of this paradigm has contributed much to our understanding of the association between work and worker health and safety, failure to consider the organisational factors and conditions that are antecedents to job-level hazards could limit our ability to design and implement effective and sustainable hazard controls (affecting . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

• van den Berg, T I J, Elders, L A M, de Zwart, B C H, Burdorf, A (2009). The effects of work-related and individual factors on the Work Ability Index: a systematic review. Occup. Environ. Med. 66: 211-220 [Abstract] [Full Text]