摘要：Objective: The January 2013 meeting in Trondheim, Norway of representatives from the Nordic countries and the U.S. provided the opportunity for participants to reflect on a number of challenges that we face as we seek to understand and control occupational injuries. The meeting also allowed consideration of how we might structure our work and communicate findings in ways that could help us improve occupational safety both within and beyond our own borders.Methods: Four challenges are presented here in the context of how they might influence the practice of public health injury control in the workplace. Emphasis is predominantly on control of non-fatal workplace injuries although the methodological issues certainly have application to fatalities as well.Results: The challenges are posed as four questions. 1) First, do we really know the extent of workplace injury problems and are we able to track occupational injuries accurately or even reliably? 2) Do the methodologies being used, both for the study of injury etiology and intervention evaluation, fit the problems we seek to understand and ameliorate? 3) Why don’t we focus on the Public Health Hierarchy of Hazard Control to address occupational injuries? 4) And lastly, have we forgotten the importance of context?Conclusions: Attention to each of these issues could enhance our knowledge and improve workplace safety for populations of workers through improved injury surveillance that more actively includes workers, use of more appropriate research approaches, actions at the more efficient tiers of the public health hierarchy, and enriched understanding of injury etiology and control.
