Archives by date

November 2020: Our co-director Mieke Koehoorn will present at a Centre for Research on Work Disability Policy webinar on Nov 30 at 9 am PST. Mieke’s presentation will explore the work and health challenges of the pandemic, including workplace community transmission of the coronavirus, employer-paid sick leave benefits, and the ability to work from home.

November 2020: Co-Director Chris McLeod was interviewed for an article in the Journal of Commerce, focused on measures to keep construction employees safe in the workplace during the Covid-19 pandemic.

September 2020: A new paper by Jonathan Fan, Robert Macpherson, Chris McLeod and colleagues examined age differences in work disability duration and found that older age is not always strongly associated with worse disability duration outcomes.

Sept 2020: Research Associate Robert Macpherson will discuss differences in work-related health outcomes between men and women, and how an understanding of these differences can be used to improve work disability management and rehabilitation policy and practice, in a webinar hosted by the Work Wellness Institute on Sept 9 at 10am PT. Please register in advance.

August 2020: Great article from UBC SPPH mentioning our findings that those unable to work from home are more likely to be in the lowest income group, in precarious employment, and least likely to have paid sick leave; and that immigrant workers reported higher levels of financial distress and greater concern of job loss due to COVID-19, compared to Canadian-born workers.

July 2020: We have posted a new research brief discussing our evaluation of the Return to Work COR program in BC – an additional certification that firms already holding COR certification could earn prior to 2012. We found that this additional certification does not appear to provide any additional benefit on disability duration.

June 2020: We conducted an analysis of employment and economic concerns of immigrant workers compared to Canadian-born workers, and investigated if employment concern impacted perceived mental health, using the Statistics Canada Canadian Perspectives Survey Series 1, a new web panel survey that was conducted for two weeks in March after the COVID-19 pandemic began.

June 2020: Researchers and knowledge users are invited to participate in a short survey that will ask your opinion on what work and health evidence gaps and research needs exist in the context of global pandemics and COVID-19.

May 2020: Our co-directors Mieke Koehoorn and Chris McLeod are quoted in a UBC School of Population and Public Health story on isolation and social connection, and the uneven distribution of health risks.

April 2020: Our co-director Chris McLeod is quoted in a Globe and Mail article about workers’s compensation claims filed for COVID-19 infection.

March 2020: A new paper by PWHS research associate Robert Macpherson found that, when compared to workers residing in metropolitan areas, those in all other areas experienced more disability days after work injury, especially in the construction and transportation and warehousing sectors.

January 2020: A new paper by PWHS MSc graduate Kelvin Choi and postdoctoral fellow Esther Maas found that workers with psychological injuries in counselling and social work occupations, and in long-term care and residential social services, took longer to return to work following a violence-related incident than workers with non-violence-related incidents. This paper is an Editor’s Choice and so is free to all.

January 2020: PWHS postdoctoral fellow Sonja Senthanar will discuss the impact of work injury and the return to work process on family members of precarisouly employed workers at the SPPH Occupational and Environmental Hygiene (OEH) seminar on Friday, Jan 24 at 1:00 in SPPH B151.

January 2020: PWHS researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students are giving a series of presentations at the Cascadia Occupational, Environmental, and Population Health Conference, January 9-10, in Abbotsford, BC