Value of the Worker Health Protection Program

Recent petro-chemical explosions focus attention toward traumatic fatalities; simultaneously, 60,000 workers die each year from occupational disease in the US. One strategy to address the toll of occupation disease is medical surveillance to identify illness and begin preventive therapies and secure compensation.

Former DOE workers struggled for years to have their work related illnesses recognized. Workers from these sites are at risk of disease from workplace exposures and are eligible for compensation. The United Steelworkers (USW) and Queens College, City University of New York conducts screenings of former nuclear weapons plant workers under a contract from DOE.

A panel of Sylvia Kieding, Moriah Ferullo, Tom McQuiston and Jim Frederick will describe the major program elements that result in a successful medical screening program and support from the target population. The panel will provide an overview of the Worker Health Protection program (WHPP) as part of the DOE's Former Worker Program, the largest occupational medicine screening program in North America highlighting the role that worker-coordinators have played in program oversight and outreach. The panel will also describe the outcome of the WHPP medical screening process. Of the 20,000 workers screened, 17.9% demonstrated findings consistent with occupational lung disease providing for earlier treatment.

Prior to the WHPP, at-risk workers from these DOE sites were limited by site secrecy. WHPP reflects the success that the constituents in this industry have achieved to document worker health and institute compensation. The framework provided can be used to integrate a medical screening program in other industries.