NIOSH's Total Worker Health Agenda: An agenda outside of NIOSH's statutory authority

Work is a critical determinant of health: Work exposures and stressors are responsible for increasing workers’ risks for injuries, illness and death; and increasing the public health burden of disease. By the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health was created to address workplace acquired disease and injuries, and to research safety and health hazards in the workplace in order to develop criteria for standard setting by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. NIOSH fulfills this mission with the strongest of scientific standards and research methods, but has recently proposed a National Total Worker Health Agenda that 1) removes industrial materials, processes and stresses, and unsafe or unhealthful working conditions, as major determinants of occupational illness, and 2) abandons the well-accepted and widely used hierarchy of controls in reducing injury, illness and death in the workplace. As the only research institute of its kind, NIOSH maintains unique authority to direct the state and direction of occupational safety and health research. By funding Total Worker Health research projects in its current direction, NIOSH creates a dangerous pathway that strays away from truly preventive and root cause control methods in eliminating workplace hazards, disease and death. This session will describe the authority given to NIOSH by the OSH Act, discuss NIOSH's role as a public health agency and outline the role of NIOSH's proposed Total Worker Health Agenda within this scope of authority.