Time trends and blind spots: what employers, employees and policy-makers want to know about occupational diseases

Occupational illnesses and accidents impose a heavy burden on both workers and employers and represent enormous economic costs. This burden could be substantially reduced through preventive measures. This paper reports on a Dutch survey to investigate what information employers, employees, policy-makers and other stakeholders need to prevent occupational diseases and how these information needs can best be met. Our survey consisted of two rounds of interviews. In the first round, we interviewed 11 key stakeholders from employers' organisations, employees' organisations, the Dutch government and labour inspectorate, the EU authorities and the Dutch Society of Occupational Physicians. In the second, we asked 14 disease registration experts to comment on the results of the first round and to give their opinion on what they thought was the best way of meeting stakeholders' information needs. Between them, the experts represented six European countries. From the first round of interviews, we deduced five categories of information that stakeholders need: time trends of occupational diseases for setting policy priorities cases of new occupational diseases for early preventive action disease patterns in specific occupational groups for focused prevention measures consequences of occupational diseases and resulting measures for policy evaluation purposes blind spots to reveal areas where more investigation is needed. The interviews with experts revealed that it is wise to rely on several instruments and findings to meet the comprehensive information needs of stakeholders, such as sentinel surveillance, epidemiological studies and case tracing. In addition, the experts indicated that linking registration to prevention requires closer communication between providers of occupational disease statistics and stakeholders.