The Role of Portals and Blogs in Health Communication. Smith A. eHealth week 2010 (Barcelona: CCIB Convention Centre; 2010)

1. Preventing workers from
becoming patients
Andrew Smith
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work
EU-OSHA

2. EU-OSHA – key facts
• An EU information agency dedicated to
promoting safer, healthier and more productive
workplaces
• Set up in 1996 in Bilbao, Spain
• 65 staff
• €14.5 million annual budget
• Network based

3. Main activities
• Identifying new and emerging risks
• European Risk Observatory
• Promoting a risk prevention culture by sharing
good practice
• Working environment information
• Practical tools
• Raising awareness and campaigning
• Healthy Workplaces Campaign

4. Safety and health trends in EU
• Small Agency
• Big issue

5. Work-related deaths in the EU-27
Deaths attributed to work: 167 000 / year
0.4%
1% 5% 3%
4%
23%
57%
6%
Communicable diseases Cancers
Respiratory Diseases Circulatory diseases
Mental Disorders Digestive systems diseases
Genitourinary system Accidents and violence
Sources: Hämäläinen P, Takala J,
Saarela KL; TUT, ILO, EU-OSHA, 2008

6. Magnitude of non-fatal work-
related illnesses
Source:
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/product_details/publication?p_product_code=KS-SF-09-063

7. Communications challenge
• 220 000 000 workers
• 25 000 000 SMEs
• 27 member states
• 23 languages

8. Our approach
• Use network and communication
partnerships to help get the message across
• Applies equally to our campaigning and
awareness raising activities as well as to our
electronic communications
• Online interactive risk assessment

9. Website
• Open Source Content Management System
• Content added by editors across Europe
• Multilingual – supported by 2000+ term
thesaurus
• More technical info in EN
• Translated using XLIFF technology (the system
collects html content across the website and
automatically replaces it once it is translated)
• For the blog – we offer Google Translate

10. Website

11. Online promotion activities
• Teasers
• Newsletter (OSHmail) (43,450 subscribers)
• Alert service (5,676 subscribers)
• Short messages
• RSS service
• Targeted Google adwords campaign

12. Social Media and future initiatives
• To reach different audiences, communicate, share
and promote information in different ways.
• To engage in a two-way interaction
• Attract readership and engage in conversations
• First tools:
• Blog
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook

13. OSH blog and Google Translate

14. Online interactive Risk
Assessment (OiRA)
• State of the art tool for micro and small
enterprises
• But needs to be adapted to sector and country
and SMEs persuaded to use it
• Development and diffusion strategy based on
partnership and complementarity

15. The tool
• 5 steps
• the tool is
developed
from the
company
point of view
• easy to use

16. Diffusing innovation through
partnership
• Social partners bridge the gap between distant
public authority in Bilbao and SMEs across
Europe
• Develop and customise the tool for their sector
• OiRA can be accessed from social partners
websites
• Ownership encourages take-up by the SMEs
we’re trying to reach
• Agency is testing top-down and bottom-up
approaches

17. Top-down approach
• Agency promotes the tool at EU level and puts
at the disposal of the EU social partners the
tool with the “EU generic content”
• EU social partners from one specific sector
develop the “EU sectoral tool” (in English with
references to EU legislation)
• Social partners at MS level are invited to
adapt the tool at national level (language,
legislation)

18. Bottom-up approach
• Social partners / Governments / Public
institutions at MS level develop the tool
• If Governments/Public institutions want to develop
a generic or sectoral tools, social partners should
be involved
• In case of a request from national social partners,
whose mirror EU committees have not developed a
sectoral tool, EU-OSHA will seek to involve the EU
social partners in the project.

19. What EU-OSHA offers
• EU-OSHA puts the OiRA tool (in English) at the
disposal of governments / public institutions /
national/EU social partners for free.
• EU-OSHA provides generic EU content and
technical support
• EU-OSHA does not provide expert support to
produce the different checklists.

20. Once the tool is available
• The tool will be hosted in EU-OSHA website
servers and it will be accessible via the EU-
OSHA portal as well as governments’ / public
institutions’ / social partners’ websites
• The tool(s) will be free to access for any
SME or any type of company who would like
to make use of it via any of these websites.
• The tool can be updated

21. Pilot OiRA projects in 2010
• Top-down
• EU Sectoral Social Dialogue committees –
construction, woodwork…
• Bottom-up (national)
• Belgium – generic national tool
• France
• ANACT – live performance
• INRS – hairdressers (?)
• Cyprus – several sectors...
• Bottom-up (sectoral)
• Wind energy association (Spain)

22. Thank you for your attention
smith@osha.europa.eu