Recently the Ibero-American Social Security Organization (ISSO) has created the Ibero-American Observatory on Safety and Health at Work (ISST Observatory), whose scientific direction will be provided by the Center for Research in Occupational Health at Pompeu Fabra University (CiSAL-UPF).

The creation of this observatory is part of the OISS’s 2020-2023 Strategic Plan, which is aligned with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Its main goals are to collaborate in the global diagnosis on occupational health and safety in the Region, to provide rigorous and comparable information on occupational health and safety, and establish recommendations to improve information systems in this field. 

The main goal of the ISST Observatory is to turn data into useful information for decision-making in the field of public and private policies in enterprise and the administrations.

Fernando Benavides, a senior researcher at the CiSAL, explains that the scientific direction of this initiative is “a responsibility towards the institutions that belong to this initiative”, mainly the OISS which leads the project, together with the International Labour Organization and the National Institute for Safety and Health at Work of the Ministry of Labour, both national and international benchmarks in the world of occupational health. He also reveals that “for us it also means a great opportunity to do research and transfer knowledge in the world of occupational health and safety. Also to train future researchers in health sciences, but of social and legal sciences in the specific field of occupational health as well”.

The Observatory will have a digital platform that provides access to the already sorted data that will enable quick and careful comparison between countries.

“The main goal of the ISST Observatory is to turn data into useful information for decision-making in the field of public and private policies in enterprise and the administrations”, Benavides explains. “This will help define interventions to improve the protection and promotion of the health of persons who work, and assess their impact in the medium and long term”, he adds.

The Observatory will have a digital platform that provides access to the already sorted data that will enable quick and careful comparison between countries, and, as far as possible internally within each country, by searching for variables such as employment or economic activity, in addition to sex, age and administrative geographic areas. It is also planned to create a Scientific Committee composed of experts of international renown to assess the work to be carried out from the Observatory.

Further information is available on the OISS website.