• Health Policy and Management
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.138-175
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• 1994

The objectives of this study are (i) to review current situations and problems of the occupational health care system with emphasis on reforming the organizations and services, (ii) to find out a disirable occupational health system model based on integration of the occupational health system and the general health system, and finally, (iii) to suggest policy implications in occupational health services in the light of objectives of the newly emerging national health insurance reform in Korea. The major policy implications of this study are as follows: 1. In the long-run, within the occupational health system, preventive occupational health services such as employees' physical check-up, working environment examination, etc should financially be integrated with industrial accident compensation insurance. Currently separately paying expenses for each different category of services by the owner of an enterprise should be disbursed once through the payment of contributions of industrial accident compensation insurance. And then, it is necessary to strengthen and expand the role and function of industrial accident compensation insurance to cover preventive occupational health services. 2. The occupational health system should be integrated with general health system for its effective management. For the short-term policy, it is necessary to eliminate fiscal and access barrier between industrial accident compensation insurance and national health insurance by means of ex post facto settlement of accounts. The duplication of employees' physical check- ups between under the health insurance program and under the industrial health services must be coordinated in a manner either through mutual authorization by the two parties concerned or through merge into the health insurance. 3. The intent of current employees' physical check-up system focused on detection of occupational diseases, should be converted to an idea of medical surveillance system or biological moritoring system. The introduction of medical surveillance or biological monitoring system is a necessary condition to build a positive, effective and inexpensive occupational health care system.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.425-434
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• 2014

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to introduce the establishment process and results of the Seoul Metropolitan Government's road map on environmental health policy. Methods: The process consisted of expert group meetings, civic participation, research, and questionnaire survey for priority environmental health policy agenda items in Seoul. Results: The announced vision for the environmental health policy was "a healthy environment, safety in Seoul". This policy was established in order to define environment health policy initiatives for a period of five years with an aim to protect Seoul citizens' health from hazardous environmental factors. The resulting Seoul environmental health policy consisted of four areas and 16 key agenda items. The four areas were "Protection for children against hazardous materials", "Enhancement of health and safety of all", "Carcinogen-free and endocrine-disrupting chemical-free Seoul (reducing environmental exposure to hazardous materials), and "Establish the foundation of environmental health policy". Sixteen key agenda items include the enhancement of management of spaces for children, certification of environmental health status at schools, establishment of a unit responsible for the environmental health of children, strengthening environmental health management for susceptible populations (children, the aged, and the socioeconomically vulnerable), management of hazardous materials, physical hazardous factors (noise, radiation, etc.), indoor air quality, and the enhancement of monitoring, research, and regulation of environment health. Conclusion: The Seoul Metropolitan Government established an environmental health policy road map for a five-year period (2013-2017). To implement this environmental health policy, budget allocation, and detailed execution plans are required.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.87-94
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• 2013

Background: In times of continuous change and volatile markets, organizations are increasingly characterized by downsizing, work intensification, and resource rationalization. This has resulted in diversification, and the emergence of newrisks within the field of occupational health and safety, with an important impact. This paper focuses on one such type of risk in the modern workplace-psychosocial risks. The current study aimed to explore stakeholder perspectives, regarding the extent to which psychosocial risks are incorporated into strategic risk management practices, at both the business and policy level. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 professionals, representing employer, expert, policy maker, and trade union stakeholder perspectives. Results: It was found that the majority of organizations do not sufficiently, if at all, understand and incorporate psychosocial risks into strategic decision making, whereby the key barrier related to practical difficulties of not knowing how to manage psychosocial risks adequately. Conclusion: The study found that there is a need to close the gap between policy and practice on a number of levels. Future recommendations comprise a policy framework and infrastructure underpinned by educational initiatives, partnerships, and networks to drive a shift in attitudes toward recognizing the duality of the concept of risk (including both potential negative and positive outcomes) and moving beyond simple regulatory compliance.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.154-166
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• 2021

Background: Occupational health and safety (OHS) is a significant interest of all governments to prevent workplace hazards. Although appropriate legislation and regulations are essentials for the protection of workers, they are solely not enough. Application of them in practice should be secured by an efficient inspection system. Fundamental components of an inspection system are inspectors and their audit tasks. Maintaining the fair balanced task assignment among inspectors strictly enhances the efficiency of the overall system. Methods: This study proposes a two-phased goal programming approach for OHS inspectors' task assignments and presents a case study. Results: The solution approach gives the balanced assignment of inspectors to the workplaces in different cities of the country in the planning period. The obtained schedule takes into account the distances covered by the work places and the number of the workplaces' employees to be audited and pays attention to the human factors by considering the preferences of the inspectors. The comparisons between the obtained optimal schedule and the implemented one that is produced manually show that the approach not only maintains the technical requirements of the problem, but also provides social and physical balance to the task assignment. Conclusion: Both the approach and the application study are expected to offer fruitful inspirations in the area of safety management and policy and they provide a good guide for social policy and organizational aspects in the field of OHS inspectors' task assignment.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.200-205
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• 2015

Background: Construction activity has made considerable breakthroughs in the past two decades on the back of increases in development activities, government policies, and public demand. At the same time, occupational health and safety issues have become a major concern to construction organizations. The unsatisfactory safety performance of the construction industry has always been highlighted since the safety management system is neglected area and not implemented systematically in Indian construction organizations. Due to a lack of enforcement of the applicable legislation, most of the construction organizations are forced to opt for the implementation of Occupational Health Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) 18001 to improve safety performance. Methods: In order to better understand factors influencing the implementation of OHSAS 18001, an interpretive structural modeling approach has been applied and the factors have been classified using matrice d'impacts croises-multiplication $appliqu{\acute{e}}$ a un classement (MICMAC) analysis. The study proposes the underlying theoretical framework to identify factors and to help management of Indian construction organizations to understand the interaction among factors influencing in implementation of OHSAS 18001. Results: Safety culture, continual improvement, morale of employees, and safety training have been identified as dependent variables. Safety performance, sustainable construction, and conducive working environment have been identified as linkage variables. Management commitment and safety policy have been identified as the driver variables. Conclusion: Management commitment has the maximum driving power and the most influential factor is safety policy, which states clearly the commitment of top management towards occupational safety and health.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.425-430
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• 2023

Background: It is acknowledged that legislation acts as a motivator for organizational action on psychosocial risks. Our study aims to provide evidence on the relationship between key occupational safety and health (OSH) policy principles and organizational action on work-related stress, and, in turn, with reported employee job demands and resources and their experience of work-related stress. We focus on Italy where specific legislation and practices on work-related stress were introduced in 2008 which are underpinned by these key OSH policy principles. Methods: Secondary analysis of the Italian samples from the employer ESENER-2 and employee 6th EWCS surveys was conducted, using path analysis in structural equation modeling (SEM) linking the two datasets. Results: We found a strong statistically significant relationship between OSH policy principles and organizational action on work-related stress (C.I. = .62-.78 p < .001). The existence of an organizational action plan on work-related stress was found to be significantly associated with more reported job resources (C.I. = .02-.24, p < .05) but these were not found to be significantly associated with less work-related stress. No significant association was found between having an organizational action plan for work-related stress and reported job demands. However, job demands were significantly related to reported work-related stress (C.I. = .27-.47, p < .001). Conclusions: Findings add support to the call for specific legislation on work-related psychosocial risks and highlight how an organizational OSH culture underpinned by key OSH principles, and awareness/competence development on psychosocial risk management can have a positive effect on organizational action. However, further support needs to be provided to organizations around developing primary prevention interventions at the organizational level with the aim of reducing job demands.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.14
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• pp.5607-5611
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• 2015

Thousands of people die each year from cancer due to occupational causes. To reduce cancer in workers, preventive strategies should be used in the high-risk workplace. The effective prevention of occupational cancer requires knowledge of carcinogen agents. Like other areas of healthcare industry, occupational health has been affected by information technology solutions to improve prevention, early detection, treatment and finally the efficiency and cost effectiveness of the healthcare system. Information technology solutions are thus an important issue in the healthcare field. Information about occupational cancer in information systems is important for policy makers, managers, physicians, patients and researchers; because examples that include high quality data about occupational cancer patients and occupational cancer causes are able to determine the worker groups which require special attention. As a result exposed workers who are vulnerable can undergo screening and be considered for preventive interventions.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to investigated occupational accidents of child care worker. We surveyed 392 childcare worker to investigate their experience of occupational accidents. Fifteen percent of the respondents from occupational accdients survey for child care workers reported that they had experienced more than one occupational accident, but mostly did not claim Occupational Safety and Health Insurance. We suggested policy tasks to improve system for protecting child care workers.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.39-46
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• 2022

This study has found the socio-economic factors that affect occupational accidents and measured the influence quantitatively. We built the panel data of 4 countries (Japan, Germany, the U.S., and the U.K.) and the analysis model counted on the fixed effect model to reflect the countries' differences. The fatal occupational injury rates in the analyzed countries had a statistically significant relationship with the level of per capita GDP, the proportion of the construction industry, the rate of male workers, annual average working hours, the rate of workers in manufacturing and construction industries, etc. The annual average working hours have a positive correlation with the fatal occupational injury rate. To reduce occupational accidents effectively, we should be monitoring and researching various factors that can affect the occurrence of occupational accidents such as worker characteristics, changing industrial structure, and changes in working hours.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.121-128
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• 2014

Risk assessment system which is the point of occupational safety and health management system is recognized to be effective to prevent industrial accident and occupational disease internationally. Ministry of Employment and Labor developed guidance on risk assessment at workplace recently. This guidance presents standard model on risk assessment at workplace. However, enterprises may be confronted with many questions in the process of introducing and operating risk assessment. For risk assessment to be implemented properly and effectively at workplace, there are various questions that need to be considered in advance, including giving shape to standard on risk evaluation and clarifying the implementation system at workplace in advance. Also for risk assessment to be revitalized at workplace, several policy matters need to be settled. First, an administrative agency should present the implementation method of risk assessment more concretely. Secondly, it is necessary for an administrative agency to develop and spread various detailed manual, models and good practices related to risk assessment. Thirdly, a government agency need to apply an incentive & disadvantage policy actively to risk assessment.