Burden, Need and Impact: An Evidence-Based Method to Identify Worker Safety and Health Research Priorities

The importance of research and recommendations to address workforce safety and health derives from the continuing toll from worker fatalities, injuries, and illnesses. Estimates of the societal cost of work-related fatalities, injuries, and illnesses range up to $2.2 trillion in the USA from 2007 to 2015, which may be an underestimate of total societal costs. The ongoing changes in the nature of work, the workforce, and the workplace in the USA challenge old paradigms of worker safety and health research and require new decision criteria that are more solution oriented than observational and that result in interventions that can be readily applied to new occupational hazards and exposures. As public funding for science research programs becomes more constrained, and the demand for increased accountability of government spending grows, the need to demonstrate the impact or return on taxpayers' investment becomes a necessity for research agencies. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has developed an evidence-based method that uses the criteria of 'burden', 'need', and 'impact' to identify research priorities and aid in the evaluation of the taxpayers' investment in research. This approach, named the BNI method, may be useful to other public and private sector research agencies or entities that need a systematic way to set research priorities and allocate increasingly scarce resources for research while ensuring the maximal return on investment.