142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

Annual Meeting Recordings are now available for purchase

304594
Developing Indicators on How Work Affects People's Health at the Community Level: Addressing a Need within the Annual County Health Rankings Report

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Tuesday, November 18, 2014 : 9:34 AM - 9:50 AM

Jeffrey Shire, MS , Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations and Field Studies, CDC/National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Cincinnati, OH
Teri Jacobs, MS , Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations and Field Studies, CDC/National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Cincinnati, OH
Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA , Journal of Public Health Policy, Boston, MA
The County Health Rankings program, a joint collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, provides county rankings within states by using population measures of health outcomes and a variety of specific factors that affect people’s health. Although it is widely recognized that work affects people’s health, some basic indicators of this are lacking within the County Health Rankings program.

To address that need, we enumerate the many and varied constructs of how work may affect people’s health, focusing especially on how this occurs at the community or county level.

Initial assessments and discussions with scientists supporting the County Health Rankings program indicate that incorporating one or more indicators of how work affects people’s health appears to be feasible. Indicator proposal and submission processes are relatively straightforward, and mechanisms exist to propose and submit data for counties across the nation or, in some instances, for just one or more states with data available to measure the construct.

Our list of risk factors and health outcomes includes measures from both existing occupational health indicators and other measures of how work may affect people’s health. Work in high injury-risk occupations, work in high injury-risk industries and low-wage work appear to be initial candidates to propose for the nation.

Our work suggests that including indicators on how work affects people’s health is feasible and, by using existing data, some initial measures can be included in the County Health Rankings program.

Learning Areas:

Occupational health and safety
Public health or related research

Learning Objectives:
Describe the County Health Rankings Report Discuss constructs of how work affects people’s health Identify possible indicators to submit to the County Health Rankings Report

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Jeff Shire has worked in public health surveillance for the past 13 years, first with a state health department and then within the CDC. During that time he has helped to develop and utilize indicators and create communication products for both technical and lay audiences.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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