Prof Lode Godderis MD PhD
Efficacy of workers’ health surveillance and challenges in its application for the mental health of workers.
Biography
Prof dr Lode Godderis is professor at the Centre for Environment and Health of the University of Leuven. He is also CEO at IDEWE (idewe.be), a Belgian External Service for Prevention and Protection at Work. He investigates the impact of work on health by unravelling the underlying mechanism and also the reverse how health can affect work (dis)ability. He is member of the expert group that advices the Belgian government on the measures and exit strategy in the Covid-19 crisis. Internationally, he is involved in a leading role in several international projects such as, EPHOR: Exposome Project for Health and Occupational Research (ephor-project.eu/) and HBM4EU Science and Policy for a Healthy Future (hbm4eu.eu/) and METEOR: MEnTal Health: Focus On Retention of Healthcare Workers. He is the current chair of Modernet (modernet.info/); an international network for development of techniques for discovering trends in work-related diseases and tracing new and emerging risks. He is also management committee member of EU COST action Omega-Net.
Prof Sara De Matteis MD, MPH, PhD
Occupational Respiratory Health Surveillance: Old and New Challenges in the 21st Century
Description
Occupational respiratory health continues to face both old and new challenges. Worker health surveillance remains a cornerstone of prevention but must continuously evolve to address both traditional and emerging workplace hazards while leveraging cutting-edge approaches to enable precision prevention. This keynote will provide an overview of the current international landscape and discuss future directions for occupational respiratory health surveillance.
Biography
Sara De Matteis, MD, MPH, PhD, is Full Professor of Occupational Medicine at the University of Turin, Italy, and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, UK. She is an occupational physician and epidemiologist whose research focuses on the prevention and early detection of occupational and environmental respiratory diseases through epidemiology, worker health surveillance and, more recently, molecular epidemiology. She has led and collaborated on several large international epidemiological studies, including studies based on the UK Biobank cohort. She holds international leadership roles in occupational and respiratory health, serving as Chair of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Group 6.02 (Occupational and Environmental Health) and Secretary of the ICOH Scientific Committee on Epidemiology in Occupational Health (EPICOH). She is a Fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini and the European Respiratory Society (FERS), and has received the ERS Mid-Career Gold Medal in Epidemiology and Environment.
Jack van der Gragt, MD, Occupational Physician, Fysiotherapist
Workers’ Health Surveillance in the construction industry; potential of a sector-based approach
Description
The Dutch construction industry has a long-lasting history of organizing Occupational Health collectively on sector level. An important activity in this is the conduct of periodic health examinations for all construction workers. Because the data are collected and stored centrally, group analysis of the results may give relevant clues for prevention. Two examples of this will be presented.
Biography
Jack van der Gragt is an occupational physician with a background in physiotherapy and human movement science, specializing in the construction and infrastructure sector. He is currently pursuing a PhD trajectory with Dr Paul Kuijer on "From Risk perception to control over the knee," focused on knee-loading disorders in physically demanding work. At Volandis, the Dutch knowledge and advisory center for Occupational Health in construction and infrastructure workers, he has developed several practical interventions to reduce occupational physical strain, while continuing to personally conduct numerous periodic health examinations for construction and infrastructure workers. He brings a perspective that bridges scientific evidence, policy-level intervention, and daily clinical practice in physically demanding trades in construction industry.
