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Research priorities
Generally, WorkSafeBC and its partners will consider projects that fall within their mandate of occupational injury and disease prevention, successful rehabilitation and return-to-work, and fair compensation.
Specific research priorities for the program are grouped under the following five themes:
- Occupational disease, injury and health services
- Intervention research
- Compensation, disability management and return-to-work
- Changing nature of work and work environment
- Transferring research knowledge to the workplace
WorkSafeBC’s Board of Directors will give priority to proposals that support one or more of the organization’s key strategic initiatives and that have a clear potential to positively impact health and safety in B.C. workplaces or the workers’ compensation system.
Within the general priorities noted above, the Board of Directors has identified a list (shown below) of specific issues of concern for 2009. The list includes the priority items from last year but with new, expanded, or altered priority items.
Research needs and relevance
The Board of Directors of WorkSafeBC wants to ensure that research funded through the research program addresses real needs of the organization and its partners, and of employers and workers in workplaces. The Board of Directors wants to ensure that the research provides tangible, even quantifiable benefits where possible, by helping to identify potential solutions to real problems. In order to help researchers focus on these issues, the following questions are included in the application forms:
- What is the problem to be solved and how will the research attempt to solve the problem?
- How will the research be done?
- Why is the research important and how does the research support WorkSafeBC and/or its partners mandate?
- How will we know if the research has been successful in solving the problem?
The Research Secretariat will facilitate access to WorkSafeBC’s policymakers for researchers who wish to discuss potential projects.
2010 research priorities 
Reducing the frequency of accident types that result in large numbers of serious injuries
- Fall to lower level
- Struck by object
- Fall on same level
- Caught or compressed by equipment or object
- Struck against object
Societal change in occupational health and safety
- Influencing general attitudes to workplace safety, including the effectiveness of social marketing
- Changing high risk behaviours
Emerging occupational diseases
- Infectious diseases
- Work-relatedness of neurological diseases
- Occupational related cancers
- Work-relatedness of Degenerative Disc Disease and/or Spondylolisthesis
- Workplace use of carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive hazards (endocrine disruptors, solvents) and sensitizing agents – analysis on reported incidents, exposures, first aid reports, and potential use of less toxic alternatives
Compensation/Rehabilitation issues
- Evidence-based treatment or management of chronic pain (including cognitive behavioral therapy)
- The effectiveness of high energy shock wave therapy in the treatment of certain musculoskeletal injuries
- Assessment of whether the current approach to compensation adequately reflects the impact of chronic pain on workers' earning capacity
- Employability assessments – six-month and longer term follow-up to determine the outcome for workers
- The impact of pre-compensation disability management on claims and return to work
- To what extent are work-related injuries, diseases and deaths under-reported?
- Why do people with asbestos-related illness not file claims?
- To what extent are work-related fatalities, as recorded by hospitals and vital statistics, reflected in WorkSafeBC data?
- Are work-related injury rates among ethnic minorities in B.C. proportional to their representation in the workforce?
- What impact does the survival of a serious (non-permanent disability) work-related injury have on subsequent claims experience?
- Are vulnerable workers including temporary foreign workers, agricultural workers and newly immigrant workers aware of and acting on their rights and responsibilities under the Workers Compensation Act and corresponding regulations?
- Worker population profiles — claim and injury comparisons
- Do injury and claim rates among workers with temporary work visas in B.C. compare differently with the general population of workers in B.C.?
- Are there differences in the population of those whose claims are initially denied from the population of those whose claims are initially accepted?
- Solutions in reducing musculoskeletal injuries – examining effective ergonomic interventions and their effect on return to work
Prevention issues
- Implications of key shifts in the economy (e.g. changing employment relationships) for the workers’ compensation system in B.C.
- Measurement of safety culture/climate or other leading indicators of safety at the firm, sector, or economy-wide level
- Comparative study of the health and safety culture and practices in the upstream Oil and Gas, Construction, and Logging industries to identify factors contributing to the differences in injury rates between these sectors
- Evaluation of prevention initiatives, including the impact of educational materials and training initiatives at the sector or economy-wide level
- Joint Health and Safety Committees — compliance and effectiveness
- Do workers with first-aid certificates have fewer work-related injuries?
- The efficacy of safety-engineered medical devices, and inter-type comparisons, in preventing work-related injuries – including assessment of the suitability of safety-engineered scalpels in various surgical procedures
- Development and evaluation of resources for workers and employers to assist in identification and use of toxic substance substitutions in the workplace