SPH Researchers Contribute to OSHA Report on Economic Harm of Workplace Injuries.

A recent Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) report outlining the economic harm caused by work injuries references seven studies authored or co-authored by Leslie Boden, professor of environmental health.

The report, “Adding Inequality to Injury: The Costs of Failing to Protect Workers on the Job,” details how work injuries and illnesses “impose heavy costs on workers, families and the economy.”

The report also claims that changes in workers’ compensation programs run by states have increased hurdles for injured workers trying to receive benefits previously covered by those programs. In many cases, researchers found that hurt employees were denied claims for medical expenses and other injury-related benefits.

Several of the papers on post-injury experiences of injured workers and their families were co-authored with SPH colleague Lee Strunin, a medical anthropologist and professor of social and behavioral sciences in the Department of Community Health Sciences.

OSHA’s report also examines the changing structure of work in the US, which the agency says increases risk of injury and contributes to income inequality. Occupational injuries and illnesses strain social insurance programs, claims OSHA, and result in injured workers, their families and taxpayers subsidizing the vast majority of the income and medical care costs of injured workers.

For nearly 30 years, much of Boden’s research has focused on the economic and human consequences of injuries and illnesses and ways of minimizing those consequences. More recently, Boden, an economist, has studied the income lost by injured workers and the adequacy of workers compensation benefits.

The OSHA report found that employers pay only 20 percent of overall costs of workplace injuries and illnesses covered by workers’ compensation. As a result, said the report, taxpayers are subsidizing the vast majority of the income and medical care costs of injured workers.