SIF Prevention: Two Frameworks for Success
The Campbell Institute has released a new white paper focusing on ways to reduce serious injuries and fatalities.
- By Sydny Shepard
- Apr 12, 2022
Understanding what leads to a serious injury or fatality has been the center of a new series of white papers from the Campbell Institute, the global center of environment, health and safety excellence at the National Safety Council. According to press release, the Institute has worked to not only define SIF prevention methods but also create blueprints for potential prevention programs.
In the report, the Campbell Institute outlined two different frameworks for serious injury and fatality (SIF) prevention efforts: cumulative risk assessment and social network analysis. According to a press release, for some organizations risk assessments must take a more sophisticated approach as hazards may interact with each other creating a need for a cumulative risk assessment. The report says that hazard should be assessed together to accurately measure risk and determine if the situation could result in a SIF.
The second framework, the social network analysis, is a long-standing framework that has been present but not properly identified to EHS professionals before. The press release says that, “elements from a social network analysis can be used to measure and analyze leading indicators for SIF prevention through the development of cumulative risk assessment modeling.” The advantage? This framework actually takes into consideration how people interact with one another and the EHS management system as a whole.
"Organizations must avoid complacency and approach safety and risk assessment as ongoing, evolving issues," said Katherine Mendoza, director of the Campbell Institute, in a press release. "We know that strategic thinking and organizational culture are the most important indicators of successful SIF prevention, so if organizations think beyond their current solutions and seek opportunities to constructively communicate with one another regularly, we will save lives."
To read the entire white paper from the Campbell Institute, click here.
About the Author
Sydny Shepard is the former editor of Occupational Health & Safety.