New Publication Captures Lessons on Young Worker Safety

A 16-year-old girl works after school entering data for a direct mail company. She is paid by the amount of data she inputs, not by the amount of time she works. Recently, she has had numbness in her fingers and sore wrists. The other night she woke up with unbearable pain and had to go to the emergency room.

A 17-year-old worker in a fast-food restaurant suffered second- and third-degree burns on his shoulder, back, chest, and arm when hot grease splattered from an uncovered, portable, grease-filtering machine. As a result of the burns, he has undergone skin grafts and suffered permanent nerve damage.

Most young people work at some point during high school. Many of these young workers are hospitalized each year from injuries on the job and a small number die.

“If young workers are going to be safe, they and their employers need education and training, workplaces need to be made safe, and laws and regulations need to be enforced,” says Chris Miara, a senior project director at HHD and project director of the Young Worker Safety Resource Center. There is no single government agency with the designated responsibility for protecting young people from hazards in the workplace. However, “there are many stakeholder groups, including students, employers, parents, teachers, public health professionals, and health care providers, with interests in protecting young workers from occupational illnesses and injuries,” says Raymond Sinclair, a project officer at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. “These groups can be more effective on young worker issues when they combine their resources and work together.”

A new approach to help stakeholders work together is called a “state team.” It is a coalition of agencies and organizations whose goal is to protect the safety and health of young people in the workplace. HHD’s in-depth experience working with New England states to pilot test a state team approach is captured in a resource guide recently published by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Working Together for Safety: A State Team Approach to Preventing Occupational Injuries in Young People, written by HHD’s senior writer, Marc Posner, explains the concept of state teams and what they can do to improve workplace safety for young people. It describes the experiences and activities of several state teams, products developed by the teams, and key resources for other states that want to create state teams. Strategies are provided for increasing awareness of young worker injury for educators, parents, employers, health care providers, and teens themselves. Case studies are included from New Hampshire and Connecticut that document creative collaborations among state agencies.

According to Miara, “this resource guide provides many ideas that individual agencies can use on their own, as well as strategies for agencies working together.” The agencies may include state public health departments providing data and experience with health education; state education departments reaching youth, parents, and school personnel directly with training; state labor departments enforcing laws and educating employers; and local health departments, school systems, and job training programs. “If agencies are ready to develop a state team, they can learn from this guide what other states have done,” says Miara.

HHD is currently using the ideas and strategies in the guide in its work with the Young Worker Safety Resource Center in Berkeley, California to encourage state agencies to institutionalize training for youth and take a team approach.

June 8, 2005