Sustaining a healthy and productive work environment for employees with health issues and work disabilities or those returning to work after sick leave may present a challenge to employers. This publication offers unique insights into occupational health and rehabilitation, covering international perspectives as well as a variety of health-related disciplines. Policymakers, employers, employees, researchers and students will find new approaches to questions of how to maintain work ability and health in the workplace: Which motives influence strategic planning in the healthcare and employment sector? How can the return of employees after sick leave be facilitated? How best to implement innovations while keeping the workplace safe and healthy? And how does occupational rehabilitation benefit from evidence-based knowledge transfer? Contents• Work Ability and Work Disability• Return to Work• Work and Health• Work and Innovation

This book presents an innovative method to improve workers’ health and prevent occupational accidents: the Change Laboratory, a method of formative intervention that enables the organization's participants to identify, with the help of facilitators, the historical and systemic origins of work processes anomalies (environmental problems, work safety and health, quality and productivity problems, problems related to labor relations, etc). It proposes a cycle of expansive learning that evolves from recognition of the problem to the visualization, testing and consolidation of solutions. The Change Laboratory method was first developed by Finnish researchers in the 90s and has been improved since then by an international network of research centers in ten countries. This volume presents the results of the experiences conducted by the Brazilian research group to apply the methodology to workers’ health programs. It adopts a translational approach and seeks to elaborate a method of intervention that goes beyond the mere diagnostics to present solutions to concrete problems based on systematized and participatory research. Collaborative Development for the Prevention of Occupational Accidents and Diseases - Change Laboratory in Worker's Health will be of interest to both researchers and professionals engaged in developing intervention programs to improve safety and health at work, such as occupational health professionals and researchers, organizational psychologists, safety engineers and public agents working with workers’ health regulations. The book will also be of interest to occupational health students interested in learning how the Change Laboratory method can be applied to this field of research and activity.

Biomarkers have emerged as an exciting tool in disease prevention, particularly in the workplace. They may be used to document workers' exposure to toxins, signal the onset of health effects, or identify individuals with susceptibility to certain environmental threats. But the uncertainty is as great as the potential. Are biomarkers suitable for widespread use? How can they be deployed in diverse contexts? How can biological information about workers be handled fairly and ethically? Biomarkers and Occupational Health describes the state of biomarker development, including the implications of the Human Genome program, and presents a range of viewpoints on the future of biomarkers from the leaders in the field. This book explores the three basic types of biomarkers (markers of exposure, markers of health effects, and markers of susceptibility to disease) from a variety of perspectives. It examines what can be learned from well-known exposure sitesâ€"Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chernobyl, and the Hanford nuclear site in the United States, for exampleâ€"and a wide range of human cases and animal studies. The book also explores the costs and ramifications of developing a large-scale program to monitor potentially exposed workers (e.g., at a cleanup site). A framework is offered for the use of biomarkers based on the mandate to "change the environment before you change the worker." The book explores how to identify ethical issues, how to set development priorities, and how to integrate biomarkers into an occupational health and safety program. The authors present the latest technical findings about markers for chronic beryllium disease as well as markers for exposure to carcinogens, radiation, and chroniumâ€"including prospects for detecting long-past exposures. Biomarkers and Occupational Health offers an update on biomarker development and explores a wide scope of issues. This book will be important to occupational health professionals, biomedical researchers, toxicologists, epidemiologists, and labor and management officials involved in worker health issues. Moritmer L. Mendelsohn, M.D., Ph.D., is Vice-Chairman of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) in Japan, which studies the long-term health effects of the atomic blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and he is former Associate Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. John P. Peeters, Ph.D., is a geneticist who is currently directing a division of the Office of Occupational Medicine for the United States Department of Energy. Mary Janet Normandy, Ph.D., is a toxicologist who specializes in the metabolism of xenobiotics in mammalian systems. She is currently a member of the Department of Energy's Office of Occupational Medicine.

Concentrating on quantitative methods for proper quality improvement documentation, the authors explain the processes for improving quality assurance among health care providers. Topics covered include group processes, statistical process control, clinical practice guidelines, care management, the l