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The authors ask you:
The mission of NIOSH’s Division of Safety Research’s (DSR) Analysis and Field Evaluations Branch (AFEB) is to assess occupational injury risk factors and to evaluate injury interventions in the field. AFEB’s approach to accomplish this mission has been to work with companies together with academia and subject matter experts to develop interventions, evaluate interventions in the field, and transfer interventions to industry
AFEB has considerable experience and success in implementation and evaluation of interventions in many NORA sectors and in a diversity of industries dating back to 1990. Currently, AFEB research targets intervention evaluation research in all sectors but particularly in wholesale and retail trade, services, health care, manufacturing, agriculture, and transportation. DSR and AFEB offer industry engineering and epidemiologic support to develop safety solutions and evaluate them in the field. AFEB encourages partnerships with industry and academia to develop and evaluate workplace solutions for the prevention of occupational injury.
The Division of Safety Research’s (DSR) Analysis and Field Evaluations Branch (AFEB) is located in NIOSH’s facility in Morgantown, West Virginia. AFEB’s mission is to assess occupational injury risk factors and to conduct field evaluations of injury interventions to demonstrate their effectiveness and value to the individual company and to industry. AFEB’s approach to accomplish this mission has been to work with companies together with academia and subject matter experts to identify risk factors and develop interventions to address those factors, evaluate interventions in the field, and transfer effective interventions to industry. Following this model, AFEB research have successfully formed partnerships in many industry sectors. This presentation will highlight the NIOSH Safety Intervention Evaluation Program and to encourage future partnerships and collaborations to address NIOSH goals and objectives.
AFEB has developed partnerships through contact with individual companies, industry associations, labor organizations, professional societies and industry forums, academia, and subject matter experts. AFEB encourages partnership relationships to develop and evaluate workplace solutions using epidemiological techniques to demonstrate the effects on occupational injury and financial economic methods to demonstrate the impact on the business “bottom line.” Collaboration and partnership activities have been developed using a wide range of designs and varying levels of participation by the partners. Partnership arrangements have formed through formal methods such as Letters of Agreement and contract arrangements, as well as informal agreements of participation described in study protocols. Collaborative research with industry has been conducted using NIOSH funds and a combination of federal and industry funding. NIOSH and CDC have developed mechanisms for jointly funding collaborative research with industry partners.
Examples of past and current partnerships are illustrated in Tables 1 and 2. The tables highlight AFEB’s research across a diversity of NORA sectors, industries, types of occupational injury prevention solutions, and partnership organizations.
Table 1: Past Intervention Research Partnerships
| NORA Sector | Industry Partnerships | Intervention/results |
|---|---|---|
| Wholesale and Retail Trade | Nationwide retail department store company | Wassell et al. (2000) evaluated the effectiveness of back belts to reduce back injuries in 13,873 material handlers employed by a large department store company. Back belts did not effectively reduce back injuries. |
| National Association of Convenience Stores, convenience store companies, police departments | Hendricks et al. (1999) assessed robbery and robbery-related injury risk factors, and robbery preventions in Virginia convenience stores. They confirmed that environmental designs, employee training and certain security operations were associated with significant reductions in robbery risk Amandus et al. (1996) reported on risk of injury in convenience store robberies in selected large metropolitan areas. | |
| Healthcare & Social Assistance | Nursing home nurses and nurse assistants. | Collins et al. (2004) developed, implemented, and evaluated a lifting program to prevent back injuries in 6 nursing homes and reduced back injury rates approximately 60% in nurses and nursing aides. |
| Hospitals | ||
| Services | Fire Departments | Petersen et al. (2008) evaluated NIOSH’s Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program confirming importance of NIOSH reports and recommendations for training programs. |
| Transportation, Warehousing & Utilities | Trucking | Chen (2008) evaluated the MCMIS inspection program and showed evidence for the program’s effectiveness in reducing truck crashes. |
AFEB has successfully developed and evaluated safety interventions, and disseminated interventions to industry. NIOSH is interested in promoting this model of collaboration and would invite industries in need of safety solutions which meet NIOSH’s NORA portfolio goals and objectives to participate in NIOSH research.
Current and future AFEB research interests target many NORA Sectors and industries (Table 2).
DSR and AFEB offers industry engineering and epidemiologic support to develop and evaluate interventions. AFEB is open to partnerships with industry and academia to develop and evaluate workplace solutions for the prevention of occupational injury.
Companies and stakeholders interested in partnering with NIOSH’s Division of Safety Research Analysis and Field Evaluation Branch should contact Harlan Amandus, Ph.D., 304-285-5913.
Table 2 Current and Future Intervention Research Partnerships
| NORA Sector | Industry Partnerships | Intervention/results |
|---|---|---|
| Wholesale and Retail Trade | Oxnard, California, police department, retail businesses, and community business partners. | Implementation and evaluation of a problem-oriented police department model for implementation of a robbery prevention program in retail businesses to expand to 4 cities by 2009. |
| Healthcare & Social Assistance | Hospitals | Implementation and evaluation of a lifting program to reduce back injuries in nurses in one large Chicago hospital and to move the program into additional hospitals by 2009. |
| Nursing homes | Development and evaluation of a slips, trips and falls prevention program in the nursing home industry. | |
| Psychiatric hospitals | Evaluation of a program to reduce patient on nurse violence in 9 VA psychiatric hospitals to be completed in 2009 and to move this intervention if successful to private psychiatric hospitals. | |
| Manufacturing | Helicopter manufacturing company. | Evaluation of a company ergonomic and safety program including multiple interventions to reduce musculoskeletal and traumatic injuries in 3,500 employees at a large helicopter manufacturing plant. |
| Agriculture | Farmers | Evaluation of roll over protection structures (ROPS) for farm tractors. Evaluation of barriers to implementation of ROPS by farmers, and evaluation of a cost-sharing ROPS program for farmers. |
| Services | Public schools | Assessment of workplace violence risk factors and prevention programs in Pennsylvania schools (K-12) targeted for development in 2008 and implementation in 2009. |
| Transportation, Warehousing & Utilities | Trucking | A survey to assess types and circumstances of injuries associated with truck driving targeted for implementation in 2009. |
Hendricks, S.A., Landsittel, D.P., Amandus, H.E., Malcan, J., Bell, J. (1999): A matched case-control study of convenience store robbery risk factors, JOEM, 41:995-1004.
Amandus, H.E. et al.(1996): Employee injuries and convenience store robberies in selected metropolitan areas, JOEM, 38:714-720
Collins, J.W., Wolf, L., Bell, J., Evanoff, B. (2004): An evaluation of a “best practices” musculoskeletal injury prevention program in nursing homes, Injury prevention, 10:206-211.
Bell, J.W., Collins, J. et.al.(2007): Slips, trips, and falls prevention in hospital workers, Presentation at the International Conference on Slips, Trips, and Falls, Hopkinton, MA, August 23-24,2007.
Chen, G.X. (2008): Impact of federal compliance reviews of trucking companies
in reducing highway truck crashes, 20:238-245.
The findings and conclusions in this poster are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Citations to Web sites external to NIOSH do not constitute NIOSH endorsement of the sponsoring organizations or their programs or products. Furthermore, NIOSH is not responsible for the content of these Web sites.
