World Health Day is a global initiative to draw attention to health topics of concern and motivate action to tackle important health challenges. It’s celebrated annually on April 7th to mark the anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1948.
The theme for this year’s event is My Health, My Right. It was chosen to champion the right of everyone, everywhere to have access to quality health services, education, and information as well as advocate for fundamental rights including having clean air to breathe and water to drink and a safe environment in which to work.
World Health Day is an opportunity to promote a safer workplace at your organization to prevent injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. As highlighted by OSHA, at the core of every effective safety and health program is a systematic process for proactively identifying and controlling workplace hazards.
A Job Safety Analysis (JSA) is one of the best ways to identify workplace hazards and the controls needed to eliminate the hazards or reduce them to an acceptable level. There are four key components to a JSA (also referred to as a JHA or Job Hazard Analysis):
- Determining the task to analyze
- Breaking the task into individual steps
- Identifying the hazards associated with each step
- Recommending controls for each step
To determine which tasks or operations to analyze, focus on those that have the highest hazard potential that could result in significant injury, illness, or other incidents. Those tasks with the highest risk should be analyzed first. It’s essential that employees who carry out the work be involved with the JSA.
When identifying the appropriate controls for each step, the hierarchy of controls should be followed, focusing first on elimination and/or substitution of a less hazardous component, followed by engineering controls (e.g., local ventilation, enclosures), administrative/work practice controls (e.g., training, development of SOPs), and then personal protective equipment (PPE).
After the JSA is completed, it’s important to discuss the results with the employees involved and come to a consensus on the evaluation of the task and the controls recommended. The task should be periodically reviewed for ways to improve the controls initially implemented.
For additional information on promoting World Health Day or for assistance conducting JSAs at your facility, please contact us!
This blog was written by Beth Graham, Director of Quality, Research, and Training
