NIOSH Awards Two Cooperative Agreements for Workers’ Compensation Surveillance

Contact: Stephanie Stevens (202) 245-0641

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) announced new funding for cooperative agreements with California and Massachusetts for workers' compensation surveillance. The awards total nearly $400,000 per year for three years.

The awardees—the California Department of Industrial Relations, California Department of Public Health, and Massachusetts Department of Public Health—will compile, analyze, and disseminate workers’ compensation data to promote the prevention of occupational injuries, illnesses, fatalities, and exposures to hazards within the states and across the nation. The Workers’ Compensation Surveillance Cooperative Agreements are intended to foster collaborations between state health departments, state workers’ compensation agencies, other eligible organizations and businesses and provide the resources to initiate or expand state-based workers’ compensation surveillance and intervention activities.

"By partnering with states to collect workers' compensation data we're better able to identify occupations and industries with the highest rates of work-related injury and illness," said NIOSH Director John Howard, M.D. "The data collected will allow us to identify trends and emerging issues as well as high risk industries, occupations, and workers so we can develop more targeted recommendations for workplace interventions."

NIOSH anticipates additional new funding for up to nine states or grantees. The next application deadline is August, 31, 2015. For more information, visit http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-14-227.html.

The Workers' Compensation Surveillance Cooperative Agreements are a key component of NIOSH's Center for Workers' Compensation Studies (CWCS). Established in 2013, the mission of the CWCS is to support the use of workers' compensation data and systems to improve workplace safety and health by working with public and private sector partners. For more information, visit www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/workercomp/cwcs/default.html.

NIOSH is the federal agency that conducts research and makes recommendations for preventing work-related injuries, illnesses, and deaths. For more information about NIOSH visit www.cdc.gov/niosh/.