Oral

This session will discuss submitted reports on field work related to Occupational surveillance and screening with emphasis on applying the findings to the real world.These include: 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. Our initial findings indicate that the BLS nonfatal data collection missed a large number of injuries in the construction industry. Among Hispanic construction workers employed in small establishments (1-10 employees), about two-thirds of nonfatal injuries were not captured in the BLS data. The results suggest that an improved nonfatal occupational injury data collection is urgently needed. In the face of meager resources for occupational health surveillance in New Hampshire, we have coalesced key occupational health stakeholders in the state to initiate a collaborative approach to establish a minimum occupational health surveillance program. This included developing a systematic needs assessment to inventory existing data sources and identify information gaps. This report sought to develop and evaluate model surveillance systems for hospitalized occupational injuries. Data linkage using probabilistic linkage techniques identified hospitalized work-related injuries in Maryland, using indicators of work-relatedness in hospital records, EMS reports, autopsy records, death certificates, and police reports to create incident-specific records for 2001-2004.

Session Objectives: Upon completion of this session participants will be able to: *list the current findings of four reports in Occupational surveillance *Discuss methodology and findings of reports *Identify implementation strategies based on findings * Describe limitations of currently active occupational health surveillance systems.

CE Credits: CME, Health Education (CHES), Nursing