The family physician looks at occupational health information

Although much is known about occupational and environmental health risks, this information is rarely used by physicians practicing primary-care medicine. As a specialty with roots in the epidemiologic tradition, family medicine should be able to use these data to help care for the individual in the context of the family and community. In this discussion, the historical links between family medicine and epidemiology are reviewed, barriers to the use of epidemiologically derived occupational health information are analyzed, and solutions to the problem of integration are proposed. The relationship between primary care and occupational medicine is a subset of the relationship of clinical practice to epidemiology in general.