OHS International Networking/Minutes meetings

2019 Feb 11 Executive meeting for the arctic network Monday 11 Feb 2019

Participants:

Agenda:

Meeting attendees

• Angie Magritt
• Anja Christina Höper
• Barb Neis
• Berit Bang
• Debbi Andriotti
• Desai Shan
• Edgar McGuiness
• Ingunn Holmen
• Jakob Bonlokke
• Jennifer Lincoln
• KC Elliott
• Kimmo Herttua
• Laura Syron
• Lisbeth Aasmoe
• Olaf Jensen
• Rob Brown
• Samantha Case
• Trevor Bell

Welcome

Jennifer Lincoln welcomed the group and asked each person to introduce themselves, speak a little about their work in arctic occupational health and safety, and what ideas they have for the group’s focus or potential activities.

Introductions

• Olaf Jensen, with the Centre for Maritime Research and Society (Denmark), has been working on fishing health and safety (mainly safety) for 26 years. He would like to work on improving the health of fishermen. In Demark and Finland, the aim is the health and safety of fishermen, but safety always comes first, even though fishermen also have unhealthy working conditions which impact their health. He hopes to share ideas and create new research in this area.

• Angie Magritt and Anja Christina Höper in Tromsø in Northern Norway. Angie is the head of the Department of Community Medicine working the last two years to strengthen work in population based surveys to focus more on occupational related health. Anja is the leader of Centre for Occupational Health in the north. Angie works as Medical doctor with Berit Bang and Lisbeth Asmoe in a research group on marine substances, and also a project at the University where they work to enhance research, education in the field of occupational health and make use of many population studies available at the university.
• Barb Neis with Memorial University, Newfoundland, Canada. She has not done OHS research in the Arctic per se but has studied OHS in fishing, aquaculture, and seafood processing in Newfoundland and Labrador – subarctic areas and is working with some people who are going to be looking at the Arctic.
• Desai Shan with Dalhousie University is working with Barb Neis. Her current project involves regulation and governance in maritime OHS, with a special focus on Canadian arctic. Her research project with Aldo Chircop is working to harmonize current governance model between maritime and fishing OHS in the Arctic, as current standards are inconsistent. Through research on seafarers, workers compensation injuries and fatalities, and fishing by extension, they are looking to find some similarities between fishing and marine shipping to see if current policy can be harmonized for the Arctic.
• Edgar McGuinness is currently in Newfoundland at Memorial University working in aquaculture OSH, but did his Ph.D. in Norway in fishing health and safety. He will be comparing the Canadian aquaculture industry to Norwegian industry and working with SINTEF. As for arctic research, he has researched mostly ergonomics on a few trips on vessels working up off Svalbard.
• Berit Bang- working at the Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and University of Tromsø in medical biology. She has been together with Lisbeth Aasmoe in this field since the late 1990s, but her current work has been in problems related to inhalation of bioaerosols among different worker populations. She is working on a project with Ingunn and others at SINTEF on fishermen, a cooperation between Tromsø and SINTEF in Trondheim. Also as Anja group at Dept. of occupational and environmental medicine – getting funding for projects on different kinds of marine industries in Norway. She is interested in this network, as it can increase the possibility to be heard and funding application success. She can describe the network in applications for funding and cooperate in the projects in different ways. This is one important aspect of being in a network, but also allows you to be better heard by the industry, authorities, and so on. She is also interested in discussing the possibility of a student exchange.
• Ingunn Holmen is with SINTEF in Norway, and has been working with Berit project on fishermen’s health and work environment for four years- similar project in fish farming industry in Norway- early results at IFISH Conference. She has been working with health and safety and work environment in extreme work environments for 25 years now as researcher in SINTEF. She sees it is very valuable to have an international network both to be able to conduct similar projects in different countries using the same methods as starting now in cooperation with Memorial and Edgar McGuiness. She would like to use the same questionnaires as have been used in Norwegian industry, as that will be very valuable to be able to compare between countries. She is also interested in exchanging students, researchers, and knowledge.
• Debbie Andriotti and Kimmo Herttua are from Denmark, with the Centre for Maritime Research and Society, part of the Department of Public Health at the University of Southern Denmark. Their unit works on health and safety among seafarers, fishermen, offshore work, and related people. They are very open to all kinds of cooperation: research collaboration is our main focus. Debbie stated that Denmark has a high priority for health and safety issues in the Arctic. She is also interested in bilateral exchange students and creating some training material on these aspects of arctic OHS. She is also currently writing proposals and looking for funding, and having a network of arctic researchers would be helpful.
• Lisbeth Aasmoe is in Tromsø has been working in different projects seafood industry for many years, but the most recent years have been with SINTEF, specializing in the processing area of trawlers and exposure to bioaerosols. She presented on this topic at IFISH.
• Jakob Bonlokke is in Denmark and working in Aalburg. He’s worked on some small projects in seafood processing in Denmark. He’s currently working on an ongoing project in Greenland in seafood processing and on factory trawlers. He’s interested in doing proposals together with the group, as well as standardizing the way we do research (use similar questionnaires, methods to compare between studies). His main interest has been on occupational airway diseases, allergies, etc.
• Laura Syron and Samantha Case are both with NIOSH in Anchorage, Alaska. Laura is focused on seafood processing safety and health. Samantha has been working within the NIOSH fishing safety research program for a few years now, but is also a member of the American Society of Circumpolar Health and has an interest in arctic issues. As early career researchers, they are both looking forward to working in the network.
• Trevor Bell- is a Canadian Geographer. He’s spent more than 30 years working in the Arctic, with most of his experience is in landscape history and climate change adaptation. So he brings a different perspective and discipline to the group. However, for the last decade, he’s also been working almost exclusively with and for indigenous communities on their research priorities from mental health and community sustainability. He would like the group to expand to not just not only health, but also well-being, and help communities adapt to climate change. He often works with hunters, fishers, and tourist outfitters in Inuit communities in the Eastern Arctic, where climate change and dangerous sea ice levels are an ongoing and deadly problem. He is interested in collaborating with the group and the OFI on these issues and linking with other researchers in Alaska, Greenland, other places where there are Inuit on landfast ice to better gain the scope of this issue. Jennifer Lincoln said that there are people in Alaska working on similar issues and that she would try to get him some contacts if he wasn’t connected already.
• Rob Brown is with Memorial University of Newfoundland, and specifically at the Marine Institute. His focus is generally in emergency response maritime settings in the Arctic, and has been has been on expeditions in Svalbard, Norway, to look at the survival and rescue process on people who have abandoned ship. While this was typically focused on passenger vessels, it also included relevant fisheries. A good portion of his work has also focused on PPE, and will be focusing on this topic for fisheries OFI. He also brings research to the International Maritime Organization representatives of Transportation Canada to ensure impact on regulations governing the design and set up of vessels.
• KC Elliott is also with NIOSH in Anchorage, Alaska. She is primarily interested in aquaculture OSH and especially in the Arctic. She is looking forward to working with the group.
• Jennifer Lincoln- is with the NIOSH Center for Maritime Safety and Health Studies worked in Alaska on fishing safety topics for about 25 years. Her work has been primarily on putting together a surveillance system for Alaska (and then nationally) to monitor fatalities and vessel losses in the fishing industry, improving PPE (particularly flotation devices for fishermen in the Arctic and elsewhere), and how fisheries management affects worker choices and outcomes. She has also done some subsistence-related research on hazards and the results of shrinking ice in an Arctic space like Alaska. She is excited about the network, and has recently started a network of U.S.-based fishing, seafood processing, and aquaculture OSH researchers. She believes networks make projects that are richer and are shared more broadly. Her hope for this network is that we will be active and do more to contribute to the improvement of the OHS of these workforces.

The broad mandate/objectives of the network and its relationship to other activities

• Relationship to Finnish OSH Arctic Network – In 2017, Hannu Rintamäki from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH) started "ANOHS - Arctic network of occupational health and safety". They got some start-up money via the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in Finland and are working on a proposal to the Arctic Council for continuation. So far, they have had one skype meeting with the network. Sirkka Rissanen and Kirsi Jussila (on the email distribution list) are the ones responsible for ANOHS at FIOH. You can read some more about ANOHS at: https://www.ttl.fi/en/research-and-development-projects/anohs-ohs-network-covering-the-arctic-countries/. While this is a broader network of Arctic researchers than our group, it has unfortunately stalled. Anje stated that they were looking for a new co-chair, but have not found one. Jennifer mentioned that Devin Lucas, also with NIOSH, is on this group, and asked if there are any plans for sub-groups since the larger network seems to be on hiatus. There did not seem to be any new plans for the group.
• Membership and Specialization List –It might be a good idea the names of each person on the call, institution, location, special interests, methodology, and plans for the future. Then we can use the network when searching for funding or needing particular expertise. (This was later put up on the Wiki – See below.)
• Executive Committee - Olaf, Anje, Barb, Jennifer, Desai, Ingunn all volunteered. Ingunn suggested that the executive discuss the group’s focus, and that it be narrowed in on a few key subjects, as a broad focus may lead to a loss of interest and effectiveness.
• Who else to invite? We have a wide-ranging group, but there are some holes, and maybe we can reach out to researchers in other arctic countries, specifically Russia. Do we know anyone else we can invite?
• Wiki - Olaf Jensen suggested a Wiki page to keep track of the members, their research areas, and action items for the group. The page he created can be found here: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/OHS_International_Networking
• ICOH - Olaf suggested creating an ICOH committee in this area. The Maritime OHS Association has been discussing this for a long time. Olaf will send out a group proposal to those who want to join and all are welcome. An ICOH is well respected internationally and will help with applications. The group will meet every 2 or 3 years.

Action Items and Next Steps

• Executive: The network executive committee will, in the first instance, consist of: Olaf, Anje, Barb, Jennifer, Desai and Ingunn.
• Barb will get minutes from this meeting out with next steps and action items. She will send out another invitation to join the Executive in case others are interested.
• The Executive will meet and come up with a draft terms of reference for review by the network.
• Olaf will move forward on creating an ICOH committee with those who are interested.==Blue Jeans Meeting Thursday, August 16th 2018==

Agenda:

1. Introductions
2. The broad mandate/objectives of the network and its relationship to other activities (see below from Anje Christina Hoper information about another Arctic network underdevelopment with a broader OHS focus:
3. “In 2017, Hannu Rintamäki from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH) started "ANOHS - Arctic network of occupational health and safety". They got some start-up money via the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in Finland and are working on a proposal to the Arctic Council for continuation. So far, they have had one skype meeting with the network. Sirkka Rissanen and Kirsi Jussila (on the distribution list) are the ones responsible for ANOHS at FIOH. You can read some more about ANOHS at: FiO Network-covering the arctic-countries”
4. Scope- will we include OHS law and governance?
5. ICOH Seafood harvesters and processing workers’ scientific group for research, information, teaching/training and policy.
6. Next Steps
7. AOP