Promoting the occupational health and safety of health workers in Southern Africa: Enabling factors and barriers to implementing tools developed by international organizations
Lead researchers:
• Ida Tsitsi Chimedza, ILO, Zimbabwe
• Simphiwe Mabhele, ILO, South Africa
• Paulo Romao, ILO, Mozambique
• Jerry Spiegel, UBC, Canada
• Elizabeth Wilcox, UBC, Canada
• Annalee Yassi, UBC, Canada
• Muzimkhulu Zungu, NIOH, South Africa
Study description:
Health workers are in short supply worldwide, especially in areas of higher need such as in Southern Africa, where high population prevalence of TB and of HIV create high risk settings. International organizations have attempted to develop strategies and tools to improve their occupational health and safety. One such tool is HealthWISE, a participatory, quality improvement tool, jointly developed by the International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization. It aims to improve working conditions, performance and workplace safety through training health workers on identifying workplace hazards and implementing low-cost solutions to address them.
Since February 2016, we have been observing the implementation of HealthWISE in selected hospitals in Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. One objective of this project is to examine the enabling factors and barriers to its implementation and how these might be leveraged or overcome.
Publications and presentations:
- Wilcox ES, Mabhele S, Romao P, Spiegel J, Tsitsi Chimedza I, Zungu M, Yassi A. Enabling factors and barriers to implementing HealthWISE in seven hospitals in Southern Africa. Oral presentation at Cascadia 2019, 30th Annual Symposium on Environmental, Occupational and Public Health (presenter: Spiegel). 2019 January 10-11. Blaine, United States.
- Wilcox E, Mabhele S, Romao P, Spiegel J, Tsitsi Chimedza I, Zungu M, Yassi A. A comparative case study to understand the enabling factors and barriers to implementing HealthWISE in selected hospitals in Southern Africa. Oral presentation at the ICOH Congress (presenter: Yassi). 2018 April 29-May 4. Dublin, Ireland.
https://oem.bmj.com/content/75/Suppl_2/A314.2 - Wilcox ES, Mabhele S, Romao P, Spiegel J, Tsitsi Chimedza I, Zungu M, Yassi A. Promoting the occupational health and safety of health workers in high risk settings: A three-country comparative case study to better understand the enabling factors and barriers to the implementation of HealthWISE. Oral presentation at the 23rd Canadian Conference on Global Health (presenter: Wilcox). 2017 October 29-31. Ottawa, Canada.
http://www.csih.org/sites/default/files/uploads/ccgh_2017_oral_abstracts.pdf