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OHSAH At A Glance

The Occupational Health and Safety Agency for Healthcare (OHSAH) in British Columbia is a provincial occupational health and safety agency for the healthcare sector. Our goal is to reduce workplace injuries and illness in healthcare workers and return injured workers back to the job quickly and safely. 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. We have programs and expertise in disability and disease prevention, occupational hygiene, ergonomics, occupational medicine, occupational psychology, education and training, and program evaluation. We also design, maintain, update, and provide analyses for the full range of occupational health indicators and initiatives, using the Workplace Health Indicator Tracking and Evaluation (WHITE™) Database, developed by OHSAH.
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.

We work in partnership with healthcare stakeholders including unions and employers, as well as WorkSafeBC, university researchers, and the Ministry of Health Services. Using a collaborative and evidence-based approach, the Occupational Health and Safety Agency for Healthcare (OHSAH) in BC:

• Uses local and international evidence to develop and disseminate best practice guidelines, workplace health and safety information, and healthcare-specific resources.
• Creates partnership initiatives based on labour -management cooperation and scientific validity.
• Conducts rigorous evaluations of the effectiveness and cost-benefit of workplace interventions.

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).