A proposed National Health Interview Survey supplement for occupational health surveillance

Traditional occupational health surveillance systems such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Annual Survey of Injuries and Illnesses, workers compensation databases, and state-based sentinel event systems have many limitations such as under-reporting and under-coverage of chronic work-related conditions. Data from population-based surveys is needed to augment these sources.

We are proposing an occupational health supplement (OHS) to the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Such a supplement was conducted in 1988 but has not been repeated since despite dramatic changes in workforce demographics and work organization. Prevalence estimates of common work-related conditions (e.g., back pain, hand and wrist disorders, dermatitis) comparable to those obtained from the 1988 NHIS OHS are needed to assess the impact of the many changes in materials, processes, equipment, and work practices that have taken place in the past two decades against the backdrop of a changing workforce. In addition to repeating questions from the 1988 OHS, we plan to include questions adapted from other validated survey instruments and original questions to address emerging issues in the new supplement. Collaboration and partnerships with stakeholders will be needed to actualize a new supplement.

The expected outputs of this project are: 1) the NHIS occupational health supplement survey instrument which will be administered in 2010, 2) a publicly available dataset published online in 2012, and 3) communication products developed by NIOSH and our partners to disseminate the key findings.