By Sharon Gray
Nearly three years ago the Canadian Institutes of Health
Research (CIHR) granted $2.1 million over five years for
a multidisciplinary research program known as SafetyNet,
based at Memorial to study and identify ways to promote
marine and coastal health and safety. A conference Oct.
30-Nov. 1 in St. John’s showed just how far that money
has already gone in producing solid results and leveraging
more funding for further research.
From Research to Practice: Partnering for Occupational Health
and Safety included presentations on occupational asthma
in snow crab processing workers, research partnerships for
occupational health and safety, community research alliances,
extreme working conditions, safety at sea, and working in
the cold. A keynote address by Dr. John Frank, the scientific
director for CIHR’s Institute for Population and Public
Health, presented some striking data on how working conditions
affect people’s health both directly and indirectly.
“Stressful working conditions can lead to cardiovascular,
gastrointestinal, psychological and other serious health
problems” explained Dr. Stephen Bornstein, co-director
of SafetyNet. “There is a relationship between your
work and your health, but there’s been relatively
little research, especially in Canada, on work as a major
health determinant.”
Dr. Barbara Neis, co-director of SafetyNet, heads up a study
on occupational asthma in snow crab processing workers.
“We’ve found about 18 per cent of the workers
over four plants with different histories have occupational
asthma with the rate varying from plant to plant, although
we can’t necessarily generalize this to the industry
as a whole. Almost none of those we talked to had filed
claims with the Workplace Health Safety and Compensation
Commission. We wanted to find out why there was such drastic
underreporting.”
Dr. Neis said the problem is that if workers who have developed
a sensitivity to snow crab continue to work, some will develop
persistent, year-round asthma that will require year-round
medication and may be triggered by other things like cigarette
smoke and perfume.
Another SafetyNet project that has produced significant
research results is on safety at sea. Speaking on the background
conditions and the need for research, Merv Wiseman of Maritime
Search and Rescue noted that the rate of accidents and near-misses
has gone up since the early 1990s even though the number
of fishing vessels has gone down.
Since its inception, SafetyNet has expanded its capacity
to document workplace health and safety in marine and coastal
work and identify solution by obtaining an interdisciplinary
capacity enhancement (ICE) grant from the Canadian Institutes
of Health Research. This grant is funding the development
of an East Coast Consortium on Workplace Health and Safety
in collaboration with the Université de Sherbrooke
and the IRSST (Institut de recherche Robert-Sauvé
en santé et en sécurité du travail)
in Montreal, the research arm of the workers compensation
board in Quebec. The five-year grant of $200,000 per year
also includes partial funding for a chair in workplace health
and safety (with co-funding by the Voisey’s Bay Nickel
Company) and for a postdoctoral fellow, both to be located
at Memorial University. The grant will enable SafetyNet
to broaden the network of researchers involved in workplace
health and safety research at Memorial and in Atlantic Canada
and help support the developmenet of new projects related
to forestry and sea urchin diving. A primary focus of the
consortium is the transfer of research knowledge and tools
for promoting workplace health and safety from Quebec to
English Canada.
Dr. Bornstein said a highlight of the conference was a panel
discussion on Occupational
Health and Safety in Newfoundland and Labrador: How are
we doing? “The panel included all the major players
at the senior level and everyone was asked three questions:
What progress has been made in recent years in workplace
health and safety in this province? What are the areas where
improvement is still needed? Where can research fit in?
We were struck by the extent of agreement about the key
issues and on the importance of working with a broad coalition
to improve health and safety in the province.”
Dr. Neis said SafetyNet’s experience with its community
partners has been quite positive. The third day of the conference
was an internal program review, and many of the community
partners were involved in that. “We have to do research
that has a positive effect outside the academy. It’s
sometimes a challenge but outside partners have made real
commitments and put time and money into the project. They
will help us respond to the advice from the external reviewers
for ways to enhance the effectiveness of our research and
our capacity to identify future funding to support this
work at Memorial.”
Dr. Bornstein said Memorial has also been extremely supportive
of SafetyNet. “The university has put cash into this
program to help us with infrastructure and both the president
and the vice-president (research) have been very helpful.”
Dr. Neis anticipates that the work begun by SafetyNet will
continue and grow. “Our strategy has never been to
do research on health and safety for five years, pack our
bags and go home, because there is obviously a real need
right across the Atlantic region. In recent years, the CIHR
has begun to put more funding into workplace health and
safety research and Workers Compensation Boards across the
country are talking about ways to provide additional support,
but given the importance of work to the lives and health
of Canadians, research into workplace health and safety
is still badly underfunded in Canada.”
Dr. Bornstein agreed that the process of building expertise
has just begun. “We are making partnerships, bringing
in expertise, sending people out to acquire new skills and
bringing them back in. Ultimately we hope to build up real
regional expertise with Memorial as an administrative core
in what is increasingly recognized as an important research
area.”
