ASSE Files Comments on Total Worker Health Agenda
One suggestion is that NIOSH add another strategy encouraging research that helps employers determine how best to implement TWH organizationally.
The American Society of Safety Engineers this week filed comments on NIOSH's proposed Total Worker Health agenda. One suggestion in the comment submitted over the signature of Patricia M. Ennis, CSP, ARM, the ASSE president, is that NIOSH add another strategy encouraging research that helps employers determine how best to implement TWH organizationally.
"Our members report considerable confusion in organizations about who best can achieve wellness integration," she writes. "In very large organizations, the responsibility may be in a health department or a safety, health and/or environmental department. In some organizations, human resources has direct responsibility for wellness efforts. Increasingly common is the outsourcing of wellness to health delivery organizations. Often organizations give the responsibility to people who have no health or wellness training. And, in far too many organizations, typically small ones, no one takes responsibility for wellness."
The comments note that the policies organizations should adopt in order to integrate wellness in their OSH capabilities "will be greatly dependent on who is responsible for developing and implanting the policies in any given organization. Wellness integration cannot be served with a one-size-fits-all approach."