Academic Article

Publisert

  • 2015

Occupational epidemiology in Norway can trace its roots back 200 years to the work of company physicians in the mining industry. The trajectories leading up to contemporary activity in this scientific field are both diverse and exciting. This paper aims at telling this story. We will also provide an outline of some characteristics of occupational epidemiology in contemporary Norway. Defining the concept of occupational epidemiology is not easy. The two core elements are “work” and “health”. Work and occupation are also used in general epidemiology, often as covariates and indicators of social status. By contrast, exposures related to work is the primary focus in occupational epidemiology. The separation from the study of health-related social benefits with epidemiological methods may also be subtle. Social benefits related to employment and health, e.g., sickness absence and disability pensioning, are outcomes that in some instances but not always could be defined within the frame of occupational epidemiology. Defining epidemiology is another challenge. On the one hand we have the study of case series and material without proper denominators; on the other hand there is the experiment. We have a particular problem in excluding studies with incomplete denominator data and problems in estimating disease occurrence....

Kristensen, Petter; Kjuus, Helge
Norsk Epidemiologi Norsk forening for epidemiologi, Norsk Epidemiologi 25(1-2): 71–77
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