Agenda indicates federal health priorities
Filed under: Health care reform, Health policy, Public health
This week, OMB Watch brought our attention to the recently released “Current Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions,” which serves as a sort of broad outline of the priorities of federal agencies.
It comes out twice a year, and OMB Watch found the latest edition to packed with health-related items from departments across the board. A few highlights, all summarized from the hard work of the folks at OMB Watch:
EPA Proposed labeling BPA and phthalates as “Chemicals of Concern” Proposed standards for “nanoscale materials” Updated air quality standards Department of Labor A prevention-oriented OSHA plan that would require employers to create and maintain plans to protect workers Proposal for limiting workers exposure to silica dust FDA For the first time, the FDA will begin asserting its newfound jurisdiction over tobacco.
OMB Watch points out that, while the agenda has not been a useful tool because agencies tend to miss the timelines, it “can be a useful planning and accountability tool to measure the Obama administration’s efforts to solve long-neglected health and safety problems.”
What we’re reading: OSHA, reform and a new site
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Health journalism, Member news, Nursing
These are busy times for AHCJ (getting ready for Health Journalism 2010!) but we want to take a moment to share some of what we’re reading:
OMBWatch: OSHA Proposal Cuts Workers’ Right to Know about Chemical Risks
PLoS ONE: The Unbearable Lightness of Health Science Reporting: A Week Examining Italian Print Media
FairWarning.org launches: New site to investigate health, safety and corporate conduct issues was founded by former Los Angeles Times reporters.
Poynter’s Al Tompkins has an interview with ProPublica’s Charles Ornstein (also president of AHCJ’s board of directors) about investigating nurses and regulatory boards.
Health care reform: What’s next? Reporters Jim Landers, Washington correspondent for The Dallas Morning News, and Noam Levey, health policy reporter for the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Washington Bureau, have advice on how to cover the local angles of health reform. Suggestions from other reporters will be added soon.
‘Gold mine’ of workplace toxicity data released
Filed under: Health data, Hot Health Headline, Public health, Public records
After a long FOIA battle that ended with a federal lawsuit, Adam Finkel, former OSHA director of health standards programs for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (bio and contact information), has “acquired data on some three million samples, taken at about 75,000 locations from 1979 to 2009,” the Center for Public Integrity reports as part of its “Data Mine” series.
The air and “wipe” samples in question were taken to determine workplace exposure to toxic substances. Finkel plans to analyze this data “gold mine” and make it available to the public in an easily digestible format (a project for which he has already secured grant money). At some point, OSHA itself may do the same.
Asked if OSHA plans to make the sampling data public, agency spokeswoman Diana Petterson responded in an e-mail that “it is under consideration and must address certain concerns including the data integrity and the completeness of the data.” Finkel, who left OSHA after accusing the agency of failing to test its own inspectors for dangerous levels of beryllium, is skeptical. “They made it as hard as they possibly could,” he said. “This database is up to 30 years old, and they’ve shown no interest in making it accessible or doing anything useful with it internally.”
The Data Mine series, a collaboration between The Center for Public Integrity and the Sunlight Foundation, will highlight inaccessible or poorly presented information from the federal government.
From the CIA to the CDC, we’ll be looking at data that needs to be public, with regular posts on the Center’s and Sunlight’s websites. We’ll describe each data set, as well as officials’ plans for putting it online – or not.
Advocacy group: OSHA falls down on the job
Kirsten Stade, advocacy director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, writes on The Hill’s Congress Blog that the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration has turned a blind eye to widespread underreporting of workplace safety violations. Stade says that OSHA “accepts without question industry reports that paint a rosy picture of workplace health – even for notoriously dangerous industries such as steel plants and poultry factories.”
The piece’s strongest words come from Robert Whitmore, a former OSHA official who Stade says lost his job after speaking out against the agency’s lax standards.
“I contend that the current OSHA Injury and Illness information is inaccurate, due in part to wide scale underreporting by employers and OSHA’s willingness to accept these falsified numbers. There are many reasons why OSHA would accept these numbers, but one important institutional factor has dramatically affected the Agency since 1992, regardless of the political party in power: steady annual declines in the number of workplace injuries and illnesses make it appear that OSHA is fulfilling its mission.”
While advocating for Whitmore’s reinstatement, Stade admits the Obama administration has taken some important steps toward increasing OSHA accountability.
On September 30, 2009, OSHA initiated an “Illness and Injury Recordkeeping National Emphasis Program” that beefs up enforcement of industry reporting rules. It is designed to “test OSHA’s ability to effectively target establishments to identify under-recording of occupational injuries and illnesses”.
As its name might indicate, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility is a nonprofit environmental advocacy group made up of local, state and federal employees.
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Spend a week at the CDC studying public health, meeting sources. Apply for the AHCJ-CDC Health Journalism Fellowships today!
- Reporting on the intersection of health, environment
- Tip sheet: Covering cuts to Medicare reimbursements
- Briefing: Reporting on health reform between now and 2014
- Covering high-risk insurance pools: Tips for reporters
- Health care reform has passed: What's next?
- Health and education: Covering these intersecting beats
- Reporting on the business of health care
- Health reporting resources for journalists on state and local government beats
