About the webinar:
While work has long been acknowledged as a Social Determinant of Health (SDOH), consideration of its impact on health is generally limited to workplace exposures. However, the influence a job has over health goes well beyond the physical, emotional and social conditions at work. Indeed, one’s job or career exerts a significant influence over other aspects of life that contribute to or detract from an individual’s health and that of their family. As a result, work has a significant impact on other SDOH and can be considered a principal mechanism for securing the needs to address health inequities. Unfortunately, the distinction between work/non-work related risks and outcomes has served as an artificial line of demarcation between OSH and the rest of Public Health. The result is the underutilization of the world of work in health inequity research and interventions. This third and final presentation in the series on health equity and the need for a paradigm shift in occupational safety and health, explores work not only in terms of its contributions to health inequities but as an intervention to address them. It concludes with a discussion of current efforts to institutionalize work as a SDOH and its potential as a conceptual bridge linking public health concerns to other social initiatives such as corporate responsibility and workforce development.