Research Priorities
CISWP’s research focuses on the key contexts that shape worker safety, wellness, and performance. Across these priority areas, we apply our unique mandate for ecologically valid, field‑applied research, using integrated field‑to‑lab‑to‑field methods and advanced mobile and laboratory technologies. Our work generates high‑quality, real‑world evidence that informs prevention, policy, system improvement, and inclusive workforce practices across Canada.
Workforce Entry and Preparation
Ensuring individuals enter the workforce with clarity, preparedness, and alignment between their capacities and real job demands.
- Develop career exploration tools grounded in real job demands and exposures.
- Define task‑level and job‑level requirements using DOSE and worksite observations.
- Support skills, capacities, and expectations alignment to enable inclusive and meaningful employment.
Evidence‑Informed Work Practices
Designing safer, healthier, and more productive work through high-quality, real-world data.
- Conduct field-to-lab-to-field research to understand and prevent injury, illness, and fatality.
- Develop evidence informed tools, guidelines, and standards for safer work.
- Provide job-specific injury and illness prevention recommendations.
Systems Improvement and Policy Insight
Improving system efficiency and fairness through transparent, evidence‑informed decisions.
- Evaluate and refine injury and illness adjudication processes.
- Enhance the data available for system‑level decisions with high-resolution exposure and capacity evidence.
Support policy development that reflects real‑world work conditions and worker diversity.
Accommodation and Work Reintegration
Maintaining participation, reducing reinjury risk, and supporting functional capacity changes over time.
- Conduct objective functional and job‑demands assessments to guide effective task alignment.
- Develop evidence-informed accommodation and modification strategies.
- Support safe, inclusive, and sustainable participation in work using.
Long‑Term Health and Healthy Retirement
Reducing cumulative exposures and supporting workers’ ability to retire healthy, safely, and on their own terms.
- Advance accommodation and job redesign strategies that enable extended, safe participation for those who choose.
- Prevent long‑term impacts of work-related exposures using real-world data.
- Promote healthy, dignified transition into retirement through upstream prevention and inclusive workplace practices.
