Response to “Working for a Healthier Tomorrow” – Dame Carol Black’s Review of the Health of Britain’s Working Age Population

17.03.2008

The Faculty of Occupational Medicine welcomes Dame Carol Black’s report on the health of the working age population.

This publication, presented to the Secretary of State for Health and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pulls together all the evidence on work and its relationship to health, incapacity, disability and vocational rehabilitation. It demonstrates time and again how important an area work and health has become. The economic impact of unhealthy work and the mismanagement of illness in the work context is massive. Dame Carol says – and we agree with her – “in short, we cannot go on as we are”.

She calls for a greater prominence of occupational health, its integration into the National Health Service, more rapid treatment for those excluded from work by illness and a new multidisciplinary management framework – a “fit for work” service.

The Faculty wholeheartedly endorses this approach because we think it will work. It will not work however without considerable resources, both financial and human.

Specialist occupational physicians are highly effective in their presently narrowly focussed field and have already set their own standards – that is a prime function of the Faculty of Occupational Medicine - and we are prepared to play our part in managing the multidisciplinary teams who will spearhead the new “fit for work” service. Another new service recommended in the report is a “Government initiated, business-led health and wellbeing consultancy” – something that occupational physicians have often developed in their own areas of work. These services need quality standards in order to be credible and the Faculty can help with establishing these.

The Faculty was a willing contributor and signatory to the consensus statement on health and work issued recently by a range of healthcare professionals. The statement emphasised the health promoting properties of good work and committed health care professionals to prevent occupational ill health and to support people to keep them in work or bring them back into the workplace as soon as possible after illness.

The Faculty is already working hard on some of Dame Carol’s prescriptions – revising our curriculum to address the issues of working health in the 21st century, strengthening our academic base and evidence base and targeting medical students, GPs and hospital specialists with the message that health in relation to work needs to be better and more actively managed. Our motivation is as doctors, keen to work with employers and employees alike, to promote healthy workplaces and healthy workers.

The President of the Faculty, Dr David Snashall said: ‘We hope this review will stimulate employers, trade unions, health and safety professionals and Government to revolutionise our approach to work and worklessness and their impact on health.’

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Contact: Nicky Coates
Chief Executive
Faculty of Occupational Medicine
6 St Andrews Place, Regent’s Park
London, NW1 4LB
0207 317 5896
nicky.coates@facoccmed.ac.uk

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