Epidemiologists in industry. Past achievements, unexplored opportunities, and future needs

Epidemiologists in industry have achieved much in the past several years. In addition to conducting important research into known or suspected hazards in the workplace, they have taken the lead in developing a code of ethics for epidemiologists in industry, established guidelines for good epidemiology practices, and have been actively involved in the development of government regulations and the setting of standards. Yet the scope of their activities can be expanded even further. I have discussed some of these, such as environmental health studies, long-term evaluations of health promotion programs, and research into major chronic diseases. But to move into new areas of research and to continue their work in traditional areas, they need to overcome some important obstacles. Among these that I have discussed are: problems involved in getting comprehensive morbidity information into their data bases, restrictions imposed on access to data by privacy protection laws and regulations, and difficulties in publishing and disseminating the results of negative studies. To overcome these obstacles and to enable industry epidemiologists to expand their activities into new areas, they will need additional support from government regulators to ease restrictions on data acquisition, and from company management to provide their epidemiologists with the resources they need. I hope that such support will be forthcoming so that epidemiologic research in industry can achieve its full potential.