The Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Section invites you to submit high quality abstracts on topics related to workers’ health and safety for the 153^rd Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association in Washington, DC (Nov 2^nd to Nov 5^th 2025).

Preference will be given to abstracts that feature originality; use of innovative research or training approaches; potential impact on policy and worker safety and health; use of high-quality data and/or new data sources; clarity of the written abstract; and potential level of interest to meeting attendees. 

Oral sessions: The 90-minute oral sessions will typically feature four (18-20 minutes each) scientific presentations and a brief period for audience Q&A (approximately 15 minutes). 

Roundtable sessions: The roundtable sessions are 90 minutes long and feature 6-10 speakers who each give a brief overview of their presentation. Each speaker is assigned to a table and participants choose a table to hear a more in-depth presentation from the speaker and engage in conversation.  After about 20 minutes, participants are encouraged to move to a different table to learn about the work of a different speaker. The process of moving to different tables repeats 3-4 times.

Posters: The poster sessions typically feature 10 presenters grouped by topic. For 60-minutes presenters will stand next to their posters and attendees walk up and have a conversation. The OHS Section (and APHA) encourage presenters to use "Better Poster Design" to present their work. In addition, at least one of the sessions will be designated for a poster competition involving students and new researchers.

Students & New Researchers: All students currently enrolled in undergraduate or graduate programs and new researchers (within 2 years of completion of last degree) are especially encouraged to submit abstracts. Also see the information immediately above regarding the OHS Section's poster competition, which includes a monetary prize.

Instructions for preparing abstracts

Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words. To the extent possible, organize your abstract into four sections: Background and Objective(s), Methods, Results, Conclusion(s). We understand that you may not have results at the time of submission; if not, please include preliminary results or expected outcomes. You do not need to conduct a research study to share your efforts to protect workers from injuries and illnesses. If your abstract does not neatly fit into those four sections, include relevant facts about the occupational health and safety problem, the strategies of your work, the impact on workers, and, implications for other groups of workers and/or policy changes.  

Members of the OHS Section will conduct blinded reviews of the abstracts.The reviewers will use the following criteria to evaluate the abstracts:

• Describes the problem which adversely affects workers’ health and safety
• Explains the research, policy analysis, or other OHS activity
• Describes research methodology and/or action (e.g., policy development, training program, advocacy) and its impact on the health and safety of workers
• Addresses practical implications of the research or program on workers
• Includes a description of an OHS topic related to the conference theme
• Reflects on how the research or intervention supports the requirements that employers bear the responsibility for providing safe and healthful workplaces

The OHS Section strives to provide CE credits for EVERY session in our program. In order to do so, each abstract must include each of the following:

(1) At least one learning outcome, which must include one of the following action words: explain, demonstrate, analyze, formulate, discuss, compare, differentiate, describe, name, assess, evaluate, identify, design, define, or list.

(2)  No mention of any trade and/or commercial products.

(3) A signed Conflict of Interest form with a relevant qualification statement. 

(4) Your qualifications statement should list your unique expertise to present the information identified in your abstract. Note: Examples of acceptable qualifications statement would be: “I have conducted research on the ABC topic for 5 years, and was the co-PI on this project,” or “I conducted the data analysis on this project.” “I am a professor at XYZ university” is not deemed an acceptable qualifications statement by the CE accrediting organizations. 

You will be notified in June 2025 if your session abstract is accepted or rejected. Due to the large number of abstracts we receive, and limited time slots available for presentations, preference will be given to speakers who designate “Occupational Health & Safety” as one of their APHA Sections.

We present these abstract topics as flexible, your project or program may fit into neither or more than one. Please submit your abstract to the topic that best fits your abstract.

List of example topic areas:

• Building Effective Health and Safety Programs from the Ground Up
  
• Data in the Workplace
  Data about hazards, exposures, adverse effects, and interventions can come from a variety of sources. What data are you using that we should know about? What is data we should be collecting and analyzing to meet today's OHS issues?
• Labor history in OHS: Past, present and future:
  How does the history of OHS reflect on the situations we face today?
• Leave No Worker Behind
  
• New Researchers or Practitioners in OHS (Poster Session)
  Newer researchers and advocates to the field come with new perspectives. We want to learn about your work. (This will be a poster session competition. We are especially interested in receiving abstracts from students (i.e., undergraduate, masters, doctoral) as well as from individuals who graduated in the past two years.)
  
• Occupational Health and Safety Equity and Disparities
  Women are still paid less than men; Black woman are paid less than white woman; Asian, Pacific Islanders, Native Hawaiians, and foreign-born workers are not included in the research. As occupational safety improves, how are we ensuring everyone is being thought of and protected.
• Other OHS Topics
  OHS connects with many different topics such as: climate change; vulnerable worker populations; chemical exposures; mental health; worker committees and grassroots advocacy; coalition building; injured worker justice; workers compensation; ethics; threats to worker protection laws,regulatory agencies and staff.

Special information for students and community members: The OHS section encourages students and local community members to submit abstracts for our program. The OHS Section offers a limited number of scholarships for students, labor union representatives and community-based organizations. Please see the OHS Section page on the APHA website for scholarship information.  

Full 90-minute sessions: The OHS Section will also accept abstracts that propose a complete session with 4-5 presenters. The organizer of a proposed session must submit a “session abstract.” The title of the abstracts should begin: “Full Session: (title)” In the first sentence of the abstract write, “this is an abstract for a 90-minute session,” and then describe briefly the session objectives. In the "Comments to Organizers" box in the Title step, include the names of each proposed presenter and the title of their presentations.

In addition to the “session abstract,” each proposed speaker must also submit an abstract. They should indicate in the ‘notes’ field of the on-line abstract submission form that their abstract is part of the [proposed title of session] organized by [name of organizer]. It is the session organizer’s responsibility to inform each proposed presenter that, if their abstract is accepted, they will be required to register for the conference, and are also required to be a member of APHA. Slots for 90-minute sessions are very competitive. If the full session proposal is not accepted, we will consider integrating the individual abstracts into other OHS Section sessions.

OHS & APHA 2025:  

The OHS Section is one of the oldest within APHA, advocating for the health, safety and well-being of workers, families, communities and the environment since 1914. This year the OHS Section celebrates 111 years. Every step of the way, OHS professionals including medicine, nursing, industrial hygiene, and safety engineering to epidemiology, toxicology, environmental health, statistics, community and labor organizing, social justice, injury prevention, education, history, law and journalism have been using science to influence and improve action to better and safer work and working conditions.

The OHS Section recognizes the intrinsic link between the work environment and the health and safety of working people, their families, communities, and the environment at large. Presenters should know how science impacts action and how that results in safer workers, safer working conditions, and safer communities for people around the world. This can be accomplished in several ways including: describing how research, policy analysis, or other OHS activity relate to the science of OHS; describing what novel actions and/or research methodology have been taken (e.g. policy making, policies, regulations, unionization, etc.); describe impact on workers’ health and safety; integrating policy or practical implications into research or program implementation.

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Ready?

Program Planner Contact Information:

Katherine Goscilo, MPH
Katherine.goscilo@gmail.com


and

Paula Malibran,
Malibran.080302@gmail.com


and

Celeste Monforton, Dr.PH, MPH
cmonfort@email.gwu.edu