Promoting young worker health and safety through outreach to primary care clinicians

Background: Adolescents are at high risk for work-related injury due to employment in high hazard industries, inexperience, lack of training, and fear of speaking up. One way to reach young workers is through their health care providers. Reaching out to clinicians is challenging because providers do not tend to think of teen patients as workers. Providers focus on commonly recognized risk factors such as drugs, sexual activity, bicycle safety, etc. Questions about work are rarely included in standard intake questionnaires, despite the fact that 150,000 teens are injured on the job each year. Objective: To describe a project to promote greater engagement by adolescent primary care providers in efforts to address work-related injuries and illnesses among their patients. Methods: 1) Needs assessment with clinicians to identify barriers, current practices and needed materials, and systems and strategies to integrate occupational health information into their clinical practices; 2) Development and pilot testing of a tool kit providing resources and guidance for talking about these issues with patients; 3) Outreach to primary care facilities, including Northern CA Kaiser and community clinics, to disseminate materials and resources. Conclusions: Clinicians have an important role to play in delivering information about workplace health and safety as well as in determining whether work is impacting the overall health and well-being of their patients. Providers are more likely to address these issues if questions about work are incorporated into required intake forms and electronic records and educational resources are integrated into existing health education programs and systems.