Ontario Summit to Prevent Work Disability

OFFICIAL PURPOSE STATEMENT (Approved February 10, 2009)

We, the members of the Ontario Summit to Prevent Work Disability, are working together to effect positive change to prevent needless work disability and lessen its impact by:

• Promoting the principles of a new workplace disability prevention paradigm reflected in the American College of Occupational & Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) white paper entitled "Preventing Needless Work Disability by Helping People Stay Employed" and consistent with the various Ontario evidence based best practices.
• Establishing an effective mechanism for getting the common-sense and evidence-based framework made by ACOEM and Ontario based research off the paper and into everyday use.
• Propagating this new way of thinking throughout Ontario.
• Creating an event in Ontario that will in turn create fresh thinking, action for change, and system improvements through a Summit-type workshop for people of good will who are key stakeholders in Ontario -- employers, physicians, healthcare professionals, claims/benefit administrators, workers, union, government and regulators.
• Ensuring that the Summit conference that we produce:
  • Introduces the new paradigm and ACOEM's 16 specific recommendations;
  • Challenges participants to decide how to utilize the recommendations to improve their own practice, organization, community and jurisdiction;
  • Creates a respectful, independent, and high quality environment in which the participants can communicate and collaborate with one another to identify concretely how to implement them;
  • Encourages the stakeholders in Ontario to join with us and form an on-going group that will work together over time to actually carry out the strategies and action plans identified in the Summit.

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