Prevent.be

Chronic conditions and diseases have a substantial impact on the labour market and working life. This urges the need for effective job retention and workplace-based return-to-work (RTW) strategies and interventions, as this is a means of preventing employees with a chronic illness of moving into disability or early retirement pensions. The proposed project will contribute towards the implementation of effective workplace health practices within corporate policies of enterprises in Europe, aimed at retaining and encouraging the return-to-work (RTW) of chronically ill employees. Comprehensive workplace health management and promotion (WHP) offers an effective approach combining individual and organisational interventions supporting employees with chronic conditions. Ultimately this may lead to a better quality of life and functioning, and an improvement of social economic outcomes.

The methods involved for the implementation of the proposed actions include collecting good workplace health practices with regard to job retention and RTW targeted to chronic illnesses, bringing together public health agents and stakeholders from the employment side, and deploying an overall European campaign disseminating guidelines for good practice with national campaigns in 19 countries.

National Centre of Public Health Protection (Bulgaria), Oberösterreichische Gebietskrankenkasse (Austria), TNO Work and Employment (Netherlands), Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH), Anact (France), National Institute of Occupational Health (STAMI - Norway), Team Gesundheit Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsmanagement mbh (Germany), Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (Greece), The Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine (Poland), Institute of Normal and Pathological Physiology (Slovak Republic), Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives (UK), National Institute for Health Development (Hungary), The Danish Healthy Cities Network (Denmark), Ministry of Labour and Social Insurance (Cyprus), Work Research Centre (Ireland)