Methodological challenges to the study of occupational injury--an international epidemiology workshop

Occupational and work-related injuries comprise the majority of reported workplace morbidity in the employed population in the United States. Despite intervention attempts, the overall trend for these injuries has been relatively stable over the past several decades. Three significant problems are raised as potentially contributing to this stability. Minimal progress in reduction may be due to: lack of etiologic understanding, lack of appropriate intervention selection, or lack of appropriate intervention implementation. Focusing on the first of these problems, a workshop symposium of injury epidemiologists and related scientists was held that developed a series of collaborative manuscripts on issues in injury epidemiology and recommendations for future research. The contributions of each are briefly summarized.