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The Governor’s Occupational Safety and Health conference (GOSH) ran last week at the Oregon Convention Center.  A highlight for many of us attending was the Excellence in Worksite Wellness short course on Thursday shown in the top picture.  About 75 attended the short course to hear Ron Goetzel, the keynote speaker from Emory University and Truven Analytics, discuss the uses of data to evaluate the success of programs and the return on investment of workplace … Read More

Motor vehicle-related accidents are perennially the leading cause of work-related fatalities in the United States. Between 2003-2009, thirty-five percent of all occupational fatalities were associated with motor vehicles as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Although a variety of factors are associated with this statistic, adverse weather conditions can play a major contributory role. In Oregon, we deal with a wide variety of weather-associated hazards: rainfall, wet pavement and flooding; snow and icing; freezing … Read More

Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless, and toxic gas that results from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels such as natural gas, oil, wood, and coal. Each year in the United States, more than 400 people die from accidental carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning, more than 20,000 visit emergency rooms and more than 4,000 are hospitalized due to CO exposure. CO-related injury and death is most common during the colder months of the year, when the … Read More

CROET research faculty and outreach are meeting to learn about a model of a research program developed by Liberty Mutual (workers compensation) Insurance Company, discuss CROET’s accomplishments in recent years and to consider its research program going forward. We broke up into small work groups to develop new concepts or ideas for research that would involve collaborations between CROET faculty/staff, OHSU departments, Oregon state organizations (e.g., Workers’ Compensation Division, Oregon OSHA, Oregon Health Authority), labor … Read More

The Total Worker Health conference in Iowa began this morning with a presentation by Dr. John Howard, the Director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH),  on the critical importance of prevention in the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). The role of workforce health in the nation’s health, where prevention is the primary method for reducing health care costs, was the theme of Dr. Howard’s presentation. Shown in the picture is a … Read More

Washington State’s Centers for Occupational Health and Education (COHEs) were described to Oregon’s Medical Advisory Committee (MAC) that provides advice to the state’s Worker’s Compensation Division (WCD) by Dr. Mike Buck of CROET.  CROET had developed a review of the COHEs and proposed feasibility studies to determine if components of the COHEs might be useful if implemented in Oregon’s Workers’ Compensation system, at the request of the WCD and Oregon’s Management Labor Advisory Committee (MLAC) … Read More

Our fall symposium, jointly sponsored by Portland State University Occupational Health Psychology Program, provided a comprehensive and often eye-opening look at the impact of aggression in the workplace. Two of the presentations are available as recorded webinars, and we encourage you to check them out. Kicking off the morning, Sandy Hershcovis, Ph.D., provided the keynote. In this presentation Dr. Hershcovis defines workplace aggression, identifies key predictors and examines consequences. Some of her key points illustrate … Read More

As you may know, CROET provides two health and safety symposia every year. We try to be thoughtful as we select our topics  for each of these, to provide a balance between sharing new research on emerging issues along with practical information that you can use in your workplace. What you may not know, is that for the last several years we have been recording and archiving these presentations and they are all available at … Read More

If you’re a public health professional living in Oregon, you are likely aware of the annual Oregon Public Health Association conference. After all, the conference is the largest gathering of Public Health professionals in Oregon! This year’s OPHA conference was held in Corvallis, Oregon on October 8th and 9th. The two-day conference kicked off with a keynote address from Richard J. Jackson, MD, MPH of UCLA School of Public Health, who spoke about the impact … Read More

Did you know that in Oregon, healthcare costs doubled between 1990 and 2001, and doubled again between 2002 and 2012? Did you know that, since 2000, employment based health insurance premiums have increased by 87%, and have significantly outpaced inflation and workers’ earnings over the last 20 years? These are a few of the statistics cited by Mark Hurliman, Oregon OSHA SHARP and VPP Program Manager, during an educational session he chaired at the recent … Read More