 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
|
| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Kate McPhaul, RN, MPH, School of Nursing, University of Maryland, 655 Lombard Street, Room 665, Baltimore, MD 21201, 4107064907, mcphaul@son.umaryland.edu, Jonathan D Rosen, MS, CIH, Occupational Safety & Health Dept, New York State Public Employees Federation, AFL-CIO, 1168-70 Troy-Schenectady Road, Latham, NY 12110, Jane Lipscomb, RN, PhD, Department of Behavioral and Community Nursing, University of Maryland, Baltimore School of Nursing, 655 W. Lombard St, Baltimore, MD 21201, Carles Muntaner, MD PhD, Behavioral and Community Health, University of Maryland, 655 West Lombard Street, Baltimore, MD 21201, Susan O. Wilburn, MPH, BSN, RN, American Nurses Association, 600 Maryland Ave. SW, Suite 100 West, Washington, DC 20024-2571, Cassandra Okechukwu, MSN, MPH, University of Maryland, 655 W. Lombard Street, Baltimore, MD 21230, June M Fisher, MD, TDICT, Trauma Foundation, San Francisco General Hospital, 1001 Potrero Avenue, San Francisco, CA 9411-, and Susan Moir, Construction Occuaptional Health Program, University of Massachusetts Lowell, One University Ave, Lowell, MA 01854.
Occupational health research is frequently hampered by lack of access to workers and workplaces. Employers fear unfettered access to their work places will increase their liability. Moreover, research conducted in the worksite can give rise to conflicts over who owns the data and what findings may be published. Workers, on the other hand, may support the need for quality research but not have working relationships with academics. This roundtable proposes to discuss participatory research methods in which partnerships between worker organizations and academics have resulted in viable research projects. Participatory research methods involve workers in all stages in research design and project implementation. Researchers must communicate research findings to participant workers in a meaningful or timely manner. Partnerships among researchers and workers can identify and address important research questions and provide urgently needed data for policy makers. We will highlight the efforts of successful partnerships between occupational health clinicians, worker groups and academics. Partnering to obtain pilot data, securing funding for large-scale intervention projects, maintaining momentum, and communication during the project and transferring findings to the workplace will be discussed. Projects representing qualitative, methodological, descriptive, and intervention studies will be represented. Projects include: workplace violence intervention in mental health and social services; instrument development for safety issues in home health field workers, correlating needlestick injuries with staffing changes in hospitals, and measuring MSD's and depression in homecare.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Participatory Research, Occupational Health
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.