O-62 Global alliance for occupational health and safety

Introduction and Background

Cochrane Work began life as a Cochrane Review Group in 2004. Funding stopped in 2018 and the editorial base moved from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH) to the who have provided funding have provided funding to date, but such funding for evidence synthesis is not sustainable in the medium to long term. Ideally, there would be an international collaborative evidence synthesis network, a Global Alliance, with some core funding to enable evidence synthesis and dissemination, including Cochrane Reviews, of work and health issues to continue. Under the supervision of an international steering group, we set out to determine if it was feasible to establish such a network.

Methods

We developed a questionnaire to determine the appetite for a Global Alliance in occupational safety and health (www.evidenceforwork.org). Areas covered by the questionnaire included the establishing the importance including the benefits to policy-makers and users of evidence-informed OSH. We particularly wanted to understand whether institutions were interested in providing some resources (person time, money) to establish and maintain a small secretariat for such an Alliance and the type of evidence synthesis activities they though were important enough to participate in.

Results

During October-November 2022, the questionnaire was sent to >150 potential respondents, identified by the authors as having an interested in work and health. At the time of writing this abstract, 20 responses have been received. Preliminary results indicates that it may be feasible to establish the Global Alliance, with several institutions agreeing to be present at a spring meeting in Rome to discuss further plans.

Conclusions

Our first results show that there is interest to establish a Global Alliance to carry out reviews of OSH outcomes at a global level. We will seek sufficient institutional support for the network to be established over the coming months.