Powerful and ongoing changes in how people work, the workforce, and the workplace require a more holistic view of each of these. We argue that an expanded focus for occupational safety and health (OSH) is necessary to prepare for and respond rapidly to future changes in the world of work that will certainly challenge traditional OSH systems. The WHO Model for Action, various European efforts at well-being, and the Total Worker Health concept provide a foundation for addressing changes in the world of work. However, a paradigm expansion to include the recognition of worker and workforce well-being as an important outcome of OSH will be needed. It will also be vital to stimulate transdisciplinary efforts and find innovative ways to attract and train students into OSH professions as the paradigm expands. This will require active marketing of the OSH field as vibrant career choice, as a profession filled with meaningful, engaging responsibilities, and as a well-placed investment for industry and society. An expanded paradigm will result in the need for new disciplines and specialties in OSH, which may be useful in new market efforts to attract new professionals. Ultimately, to achieve worker and workforce well-being we must consider how to implement this expanded focus.

Rapid and profound changes anticipated in the future of work will have significant implications for the education and training of occupational safety and health (OSH) professionals and the workforce. As the nature of the workplace, work, and the workforce change, the OSH field must expand its focus to include existing and new hazards (some yet unknown), consider how to protect the health and well-being of a diverse workforce, and understand and mitigate the safety implications of new work arrangements. Preparing for these changes is critical to developing proactive systems that can protect workers, prevent injury and illness, and promote worker well-being. An in-person workshop held on February 3–4, 2020 at The University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHealth) School of Public Health in Houston, Texas, USA, examined some of the challenges and opportunities OSH education will face in both academic and industry settings. The onslaught of the COVID-19 global pandemic reached the United States one month after this workshop and greatly accelerated the pace of change. This article summarizes presentations from national experts and thought leaders across the spectrum of OSH and professionals in the fields of strategic foresight, systems thinking, and industry, and provides recommendations for the field.

El libro es un texto de referencia para especialistas en medicina del trabajo, médi-cos/as y enfermeros/as así como para los técnicos superiores de prevención de riesgos laborales. Venía siendo ya una referencia y en esta tercera edición actualizada lo seguirá siendo. Entre otras cosas el texto aporta una visión multidisciplinar y multiprofesional de la Salud Laboral, lo cual es de agradecer porque refleja una forma de entender el trabajo en prevención de riesgos laborales que, afortunadamente, se ha ido instaurando en los últimos años.Los autores han sabido reunir en esta obra a prestigiosos expertos en salud laboral, fundamentalmente españoles, pero también de otros países europeos y americanos que, con sus aportaciones, han elaborado un texto que será de consulta obligada para todos los profesionales de la Salud Laboral y, con seguridad, se convertirá en uno de los manuales de referencia para cuantos accedan a cualquiera de las especialidades de técnicos de prevención de riesgos laborales y, en particular, para la nueva generación de especialistas en medicina y enfermería del trabajo y de salud laboral, en su período de residencia como MIR o como EIR, respectivamente.El libro se estructura en seis partes. En la primera se presentan los fundamentos propios del conocimiento y la acción en

Growth of the information economy and globalization of labor markets will be marked by exponential growth in emerging technologies that will cause considerable disruption of the social and economic sectors that drive the global job market. These disruptions will alter the way we work, where we work, and will be further affected by the changing demographic characteristics and level of training of the available workforce. These changes will likely result in scenarios where existing workplace hazards are exacerbated and new hazards with unknown health effects are created. The pace of these changes heralds an urgent need for a proactive approach to understand the potential effects new and emerging workplace hazards will have on worker health, safety, and well-being. As employers increasingly rely on non-standard work arrangements, research is needed to better understand the work organization and employment models that best support decent work and improved worker health, safety, and well-being. This need has been made more acute by the SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic that has resulted in dramatic changes in employment patterns, millions of lost jobs, an erosion of many economic sectors, and widespread disparities which further challenge occupational safety and health (OSH) systems to ensure a healthy and productive workplace. To help identify new research approaches to address OSH challenges in the future, a virtual workshop was organized in June 2020 with leading experts in the fields of OSH, well-being, research methods, mental health, economics, and life-course analysis. A paradigm shift will be needed for OSH research in the future of work that embraces key stakeholders and thinks differently about research that will improve lives of workers and enhance enterprise success. A more transdisciplinary approach to research will be needed that integrates the skills of traditional and non-traditional OSH research disciplines, as well as broader research methods that support the transdisciplinary character of an expanded OSH paradigm. This article provides a summary of the presentations, discussion, and recommendations that will inform the agenda of the Expanded Focus for Occupational Safety and Health (Ex4OSH) International Conference, planned for December 2021.

We present a simple and practical tool that allows the usual distribution of the duration of non-occupational sick leave to be determined by medical diagnosis. A total of 2,646,352 episodes of medically certified sick leave, registered by the Catalan Institute of Medical Evaluations for the period 2006-2008, were followed to closure and were entered into a spreadsheet. Given its asymmetric distribution, the median duration of sick leave was 9 days. Musculoskeletal disorders were the most frequent diagnostic group (22.5%), while neoplasms had the longest median duration (56 days). The most common specific diagnoses were diarrhea-gastroenteritis (8.2%; median: 3 days) and acute rhinopharyngitis (5.2%; median: 4 days). The distribution of the duration of sick leave in a population varies by diagnosis and is asymmetric, with most episodes being much shorter than the mean duration. This finding is important for better clinical and administrative management of sick leave episodes.

In the context of the current crisis of the Welfare State, occupational health can contribute significantly to its sustainability by facilitating decent and healthy employment throughout the working life. To this end, occupational health must take on the challenge of promoting health, preventing and managing injuries, illnesses and disability, based on better coordination of prevention services, mutual insurance companies, and health services, as well as by empowering the leadership in prevention of companies and the active participation of those who work.

The aim of this review is to stimulate new ideas and actions for the prevention of this important public health problem. In 2002 and 2003, respectively, the number of non-fatal occupational injuries was 971,406 and 906,638. Thus, every day in Spain there are more than 2500 non-fatal and between 2 and 3 fatal occupational injuries. Although the profile of the at-risk worker population has changed greatly over the past decade, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the risk of occupational injury still centers on blue collar workers, whether qualified or nonqualified, in the primary and secondary sectors of economic activity. The most common mechanisms of occupational injuries are overexertion for non-fatal injuries and traffic-related for fatal events. The adverse health consequences of new types of employment, which emphasize flexibility and deregulation of the labour market, are exemplified by the association between temporary employment and increased risk of occupational injury. New injury prevention programs have emerged in the last decade, but they appear to have had limited impact. Preventive activities should focus both on working conditions at the company level (micro) as well as on employment and industrial public policies (macro). Greater evaluation is needed of these latter policies.

No abstract