Back to health, back to work
In just one year, 1.3 million people
suffered an illness they put down to their work. Thousands more
died from occupational cancers. Britain lost over 23 million
working days because of ill health. Occupational health is an
increasingly serious issue and IOSH believes more needs to be done
– not just to stop people falling sick in the first place, but to
support them back to work too. Our Back to Health, Back to Work
campaign called for a greater role for health and safety
professionals to support the limited number of health specialists
operating in this important area.
Making our voice heard
• We developed a course to extend our members’ skills in
occupational health support and rehabilitation
• We launched the free online
Occupational Health Toolkit – it attracted 60,000 hits in its
first year
• We published free
guides on rehabilitating people at work and workplace
health and wellbeing
• We published research into health issues affecting a range
of different people, from call centre operators to older
workers
• We offered free courses to tackle workplace air
contaminants
Quote me
“I think there is an opportunity for health and safety
practitioners to acquire new competencies to support the agenda of
health and well being in the workplace. I believe they could be
very important in a proactive and preventative way, in seeing early
signs of distress and helping people return to work.”
Dame Carol Black, National Director for
Health and Work at the Department for Work and Pensions, 2009