Utilising wearable and environmental sensors to identify the context of gait performance in the home

In this paper we describe our work on the development of a multi-sensory deployment within the homes of elderly people prone to falling. The aim of our work is to provide both preventative guidance with regards to environmental hazards, as well as to create rich information context around gait performance, near-falls or falls that do happen so the cause can be diagnosed more thoroughly. We use a gait analysis platform developed at the TRIL Centre, coupled with a SenseCam wearable camera, to identify the activities and the location in the home during walking activities. In addition to this, and to add even more context, we use home energy- monitoring to enhance our understanding of activities and activity patterns in the home. This method could support older people in identifying a key problem and allow the participant to modify their behaviour or environment to limit or prevent future occurrences

Integrating research, surveillance, and practice in environmental public health tracking.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is working with selected state and local health departments, academic centers, and others to develop an environmental public health tracking initiative to improve geographic and temporal surveillance of environmental hazards, exposures, and related health outcomes. The objective is to support policy strategies and interventions for disease prevention by communities and environmental health agencies at the federal, state, and local levels. The first 3 years of the initiative focused on supporting states and cities in developing capacity, information technology infrastructure, and pilot projects to demonstrate electronic linkage of environmental hazard or exposure data and disease data. The next phase requires implementation across states. This transition could provide opportunities to further integrate research, surveillance, and practice through attention to four areas. The first is to develop a shared and transparent knowledge base that draws on environmental health research and substantiates decisions about what to track and the interpretation of results. The second is to identify and address information needs of policy and stakeholder audiences in environmental health. The third is to adopt mechanisms for coordination, decision making, and governance that can incorporate and support the major entities involved. The fourth is to promote disease prevention by systematically identifying and addressing population-level environmental determinants of health and disease

A scientometric analysis and review of fall from height research in construction

Fall from height (FFH) in the construction industry has earned much attention among researchers in recent years. The present review-based study introduced a science mapping approach to evaluate the FFH studies related to the construction industry. This study, through an extensive bibliometric and scientometric assessment, recognized the most active journals, keywords and the nations in the field of FFH studies since 2000. Analysis of the authors’ keywords revealed the emerging research topics in the FFH research community. Recent studies have been discovered to pay more attention to the application of Computer and Information Technology (CIT) tools, particularly building information modelling (BIM) in research related to FFH. Other emerging research areas in the domain of FFH include rule checking, and prevention through design. The findings summarized the mainstream research areas (e.g., safety management program), discussed existing research gaps in FFH domain (e.g., the adaptability of safety management system), and suggests future directions in FFH research. The recommended future directions could contribute to improving safety for the FFH research community by evaluating existing fall prevention programs in different contexts; integrating multiple CIT tools in the entire project lifecycle; designing fall safety courses to workers associated with temporary agents and prototype safety knowledge tool development. The current study was restricted to the FFH literature sample included the journal articles published only in English and in Scopus

Joint Committees: No Substitute for Union Action

[Excerpt] Nearly half of all industrial union contracts mandate joint labor-management health and safety committees (JHSCs). In the past five years, mandated JHSCs have also become common in the public sector in states that have enacted occupational safety statutes for public workers. And now many health and safety activists are advocating state and federal laws that would require all workplaces, union and nonunion, to have JHSCs. Although such laws are vitally important in establishing worker rights to safe workplaces, by themselves joint committees cannot be expected to solve serious health and safety problems

Social Issues of Genome Innovation and Intellectual Property

Dr. Draper\u27s focus is the use of personal information derived from genome research. She identifies several potential problems, including access to and control of genetic information, employment discrimination and social stratification. She also recommends possible solutions

Developing a worker engagement maturity model for improving occupational safety and health (OSH) in construction

Research on worker engagement (WE) has identified the increased importance of meaningful discussion, communication, knowledge sharing, and shared decision-making regarding occupational safety and health (OSH) practices within the construction industry. This paper reports on initial findings on the development of a meaningful discussion framework for improving OSH and engagement of the construction workforce. The main purpose of the framework is to rank levels of discussion amongst construction operatives and supervisors related to positive performance at work and enhancement of OSH. This reflects the legal and ethical requirements for management to collaborate with the construction workforce for the improvement of OSH. For effective WE in OSH to become the norm, the effectiveness of corporate OSH engagement programmes needs to be assessed using a valid and reliable tool. Also, there is a need for a practice-driven and -validated worker engagement maturity model (meaningful discussion framework) that not only identifies and aligns with existing organisational capabilities, as shown in the HSE leadership and worker involvement research, but also addresses a set of dimensions specifically targeted at construction workers. The methods used to develop the framework discussed here involved qualitative interviews to gain accounts of episodes of worker engagement, which were categorised using NVivo and ranked based on feedback from expert focus groups. The meaningful discussion framework highlights the link that higher levels of worker and organisational maturity can have with higher levels of construction OSH performance. This is based on a number of logically progressive worker maturity levels, where higher levels build on the requirements of already existing levels, from discussing issues affecting individual workers to issues that affect other workers, and ultimately to issues “beyond the site gate”, such as design processes. Final validation testing of the model will be reported on at a later date

Prioritization of hazards by means of a QFD-based procedure

Despite the evolution of regulations in the field of occupational health and safety promoted in EU countries, the number of accidents and victims has not significantly decreased in recent years, especially in constructions and agriculture sectors, as underlined by official reports of the Italian Workers' Compensation Authority. Main reasons of such a situation are due to the characteristics of working activities in these sectors. The variety of operations, the frequent exchange of tasks among workers within the same company, the continuous change of workplaces, the frequent exchange of workers for the same activity (e.g. seasonal workers), and the workers’ stress caused by seasonal jobs. For these reasons both risk assessment and safety management activities result in being more difficult than in other working sectors. Thus, it is important to provide methodologies and tools that allow companies to carry out these tasks more effectively. In such a context, the study proposed by Esra Bas in 2014 certainly represents an attempt to provide a supporting methodology for engineers engaged in risk assessment activities. This approach consists in the use of the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method, and it is aimed at evaluating how specific tasks can be in relationship with specific hazards, which in turn are related to specific events, and finally at defining what preventive/protective measures can be introduced against those events. Based on this, we tried to further investigate such an approach, with the goal of providing an easier-to-use tool, which can be used in risk assessment activities of critical contexts as the agriculture one. With this aim in mind, a case study concerning the risk assessment of an agricultural machinery was carried out

Healing Our Houses Will Cure Lead Poisoning Epidemic

Two main obstacles hinder efforts to end lead poisoning in Buffalo. One, lack of knowledge in at-risk populations about causes, symptoms, and prevention, which puts people at greater risk and makes enforcement of current system difficult. Two, the poor condition of our houses makes repairs unaffordable to homeowners and discourages outside investment