The association between safety climate and noncombat injury events among United States Air Force workers.

INTRODUCTION: Work-related injuries are a common lagging safety indicator whereas safety climate assessments can help identify constructs serving as leading indicators. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) partnered with the U.S. Department of the Air Force (DAF) Safety Center to examine the association between perceptions of safety climate survey constructs and the number of injury events within the DAF workforce. METHODS: The DAF administers voluntary, anonymous, occupation-specific safety climate surveys to DAF workers using the internal Air Force Combined Mishap Reduction System (AFCMRS). Survey responses from 2014 to 2018 provided by DAF workers and injury events in maintenance, support, and operations occupations were shared with NIOSH. Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed five constructs: Leadership and Communication; Organizational Safety Priority; Error Management; Resource Adequacy; and Deployment/Official Travel Impact. Squadron-level analysis included bivariate correlations and estimated Rate Ratios (RRs). RESULTS: 1,547 squadrons administered the survey, averaging 144 workers and 15.8 reportable injuries per squadron. Higher (more favorable) squadron-level construct scores were consistently correlated with fewer reported injuries (p < 0.001). Controlling for the number of workers, RRs revealed significant reductions in injury rates with each one-unit increase in responses: Leadership and Communication RR = 0.40 (95%CI: 0.32-0.48); Organizational Safety Priority RR = 0.50 (95%CI: 0.40-0.64); Error Management RR = 0.37 (95%CI: 0.30-0.47); Deployment/Official Travel Impact RR = 0.36 (95%CI: 0.29-0.45). Resource Adequacy revealed a non-significant lower injury rate RR = 0.87 (95%CI: 0.73-1.04). CONCLUSIONS: This unique study quantified safety climate and the association with injuries across a multi-year period. While safety climate measurements may be limited by frequent turnover and the self-reported, voluntary, anonymous nature of AFCMRS, the strength of this study is in the census of injuries. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Future research should include longitudinal analyses to examine the impact on injuries when squadron leaders are provided feedback on safety climate survey results.

2022 National Occupational Injury Research Symposium (NOIRS): Preventing workplace injuries in a changing world.

About NOIRS: The National Occupational Injury Research Symposium (NOIRS) is the only conference solely dedicated to occupational injury research and prevention. The 8th NOIRS, sponsored by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and several partners, was held on May 10-12, 2022. NOIRS was held entirely virtually in response to concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic and honoring the symposium theme "Preventing Workplace Injuries in a Changing World." About this Special Issue: The intent of this issue is to highlight the breadth of high-quality presentations at NOIRS, and to make them available to those who did not participate in the conference. This issue includes three short communication articles and nine research articles. Featured research articles in this special issue span a wide variety of methods, data sources, and worker populations. They address leading and emerging causes and contributors to occupational injury in a range of industries and occupations. Concluding Remarks: We hope that this special issue provides readers with a view into some of the research presented at the 2022 NOIRS. We also hope the articles are useful for research and practice, and thinking toward the future.

Fatal work-related falls in the United States, 2003-2014.

BACKGROUND: Falls are the second leading cause of work-related fatalities among US workers. We describe fatal work-related falls from 2003 to 2014, including demographic, work, and injury event characteristics, and changes in rates over time. METHODS: We identified fatal falls from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries and estimated rates using the BLS Current Population Survey. RESULTS: From 2003 to 2014, there were 8880 fatal work-related falls, at an annual rate of 5.5 per million FTE. Rates increased with age. Occupations with the highest rates included construction/extraction (42.2 per million FTE) and installation/maintenance/repair (12.5 per million FTE). Falls to a lower level represented the majority (n = 7521, 85%) compared to falls on the same level (n = 1128, 13%). CONCLUSIONS: Falls are a persistent source of work-related fatalities. Fall prevention should continue to focus on regulation adherence, Prevention through Design, improving fall protection, training, fostering partnerships, and increasing communication.