man in yellow hard hat inside warehouse holding upper back

NSC Announces $285K Available in Grants for MSD Solutions

Funding will be available through two grants, and recipients will be announced in June 2023.

The National Safety Council (NSC) recently announced that $285,000 is available through grants focusing on musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), an injury that affects thousands each year.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2018, 272,780 cases of MSD, or 30 percent of the overall cases of days away from work, caused people to miss work in the private sector.

The funds will be awarded under two grants: Research to Solutions (R2S), which will award a total of $225,000 (with a maximum of $75,000 per project), and MSD Solutions Pilot Grant 1.0, which plans to award $60,000, per an NSC news release.

The R2S grant is open to “academic institutions, businesses and industries” looking to “innovate new solutions for MSDs” that would be applicable to a wide range of industries, NSC said. It’s recommended that proposals submitted under this grant relate to at least one of the following “key research areas:”

  • “emerging technologies,
  • solutions to jobs or tasks known to have high MSD risk,
  • MSD management systems,
  • future of work and
  • total worker wellbeing.”

The MSD Solutions Pilot Grant 1.0 is slightly more specific, both in applicant audience and topic. Open to MSD Pledge community members (specifically those “willing to partner with the six leading technology providers featured at the 2022 NSC Safety Congress & Expo”), this grant addresses manual-material-handling-related MSDs, the organization said.

Recipients—who will be revealed in June 2023—will be able to share information on their projects at a future NSC event.

About the Author

Alex Saurman is a former Content Editor for Occupational Health & Safety,who has since joined OH&S’s client services team. She continues to work closely with OH&S’s editorial team and contributes to the magazine.

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