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OHSAH At A Glance

The Occupational Health and Safety Agency for Healthcare (OHSAH) in BC has, since its inception in 1998, worked to reduce workplace injuries and illness in healthcare workers and return injured workers back to the job quickly and safely.

OHSAH coordinates the development of provincial OHS standards, information technology solutions to support occupational health and safety and the sharing of educational resources and OHS tools among all BC healthcare organizations to reduce duplication and add value.

We use local and international evidence to develop and disseminate best practice guidelines, workplace health and safety information, and healthcare-specific resources; create partnership initiatives based on labour -management cooperation and scientific validity, and conduct rigorous evaluations of the effectiveness and cost-benefit of workplace interventions. Key programs include Violence Prevention, Disease Prevention, Education and Training on a wide variety of topics, and the innovative WHITE.net™ database that enables the healthcare sector to reduce and/or eliminate workplace injuries, provide prompt clinical and workplace interventions to reduce disability and time loss, and evaluate the effectiveness of health and safety programs.

OHSAH is jointly governed by employers and unions (bipartite), providing an innovative approach to improving workplace health and safety in the healthcare sector. A true strength of the Agency is the collaboration that occurs among these key stakeholders.

Guided by OHSAH's core workplace values, our mission is:

• To work with all members of the healthcare community to develop guidelines and programs designed to promote better health and safety practices and safe early return-to-work.
• To promote pilot programs and facilitate the sharing of best practices.
• To develop new measures to assess the effectiveness of programs and innovations in this area.

OHSAH is a non-profit provincial agency and receives its core funding from the British Columbia Ministry of Health Services. Although OHSAH’s renewal and funding was initially tied to the collective bargaining process, in 2006 we received stable funding for the next five years.

In addition to the core funding we receive from the Ministry of Health Services, a number of specific initiatives are grant-funded through various agencies, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Health Canada, WorkSafeBC, and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR).