Safety data should be disseminated more quickly: Study

Workplace safety data needs to be collected and disseminated much faster in Oregon, according to a study released Thursday.

Researchers from Oregon State University’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences evaluated the state’s occupational safety and health surveillance system, noting that the state had a two- to three-year lag between when a workplace hazard or accident occurred and when a new indicator was created or disseminated to the public.

“More timely, complete and sustainable surveillance is going to benefit Oregon workers,” said Liu Yang, a recent Ph.D. graduate of Oregon State’s Public Health and Human Sciences college and author of the study. “The whole purpose for surveillance is to generate quality data that can be used for research and guiding practice. So if the system can provide more timely, complete data in a stable and systematic way, this is going to help improve work safety and health for Oregon workers.”

Although the researchers found that the data quality was good, they found that the agency would benefit from adopting state-specific occupational health indicators and state agency data to improve the speed of compiling data, ensure it is more targeted for local needs and enable faster dissemination to workplaces. One of the issues is the lack of stable funding sources, according to the study.

The researchers found that the state’s occupational safety and health experts are starting to use emergency department visit and real-time clinical health care sources to track occupational health incidents, and urge the state to continue to evaluate its surveillance system on a regular basis.

The full study was published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.