The National Occupational Research Agenda: a model of broad stakeholder input into priority setting

No single organization has the resources necessary to conduct occupational safety and health research to adequately serve the needs of workers in the United States. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) undertook the task of setting research priorities in response to a broadly perceived need to systematically address those topics most pressing and most likely to yield gains to workers and to the nation.

NIOSH and its public and private partners used a consensus-building process to set priorities for the next decade for occupational safety and health research--the National Occupational Research Agenda.

The process resulted in the identification of 21 research priorities grouped into 3 categories: disease and injury, work environment and workforce, and research tools and approaches.

Although the field of occupational safety and health is often contentious and adversarial, these research priorities reflect a remarkable degree of concurrence among a broad range of stakeholders who provided input into a clearly defined and open process.