Protecting Youth at Work: Surveillance to Practice in Massachusetts

Each year in the US an estimated 230,000 teens less that age 18 are injured while working. Injury rates for young workers are higher than those for adults. Teens tend to work in jobs that are higher than average risk for workers of all ages. Inexpereince, lack of training and inadequate supervision, as well as developmental factors may also contribute to increased injury risk.

Since 1993, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health Teens at Work (TAW) Project tracked work-related injuries to teens less than age 18 using workers' compensation claim records and emergency department data. Surveillance findings, together with information from interviews with injured teens, have been used to inform prevention efforts. TAW has worked with a wide range of agency and community partners to address identified problems and has had numerous successes in influencing both policy and practice to improve protections for youth at work. These include, among others, changes in state child labor lawsand vocational education requirements, a community iniatiated health and safety peer leader program,and an active interagency Youth Employment Safety YES)team.

In this presentation, we will compare the trend in the teen injury rate in Massachusetts from 1994-2007 compared to that for adults. We will, in turn, describe policy and practice initiatives that may have contributed to the observed downward trend in the teenrate, which exceeds that for adults. Challenges in attributing the delining injury rate to TAW and partner activities will be discussed.