Professionals, workers and managers are often exploring internet in search for answers to their concerns. Printed books and scientific journals are steadily being replaced by online sources, also in the domain of Occupational Safety and Health. Finding, selecting and using relevant and reliable online information and education, is challenging. A new knowledge infrastructure could be created including roadmaps. We need more knowledge on how to find and use reliable online sources and better skills as we need these to improve safety and health at the workplace. Awareness has to grow that we need good training programs and guides on how to find reliable information for occupational safety and health (OSH).
The LDOH foundation supports capacity building in this area by various means. One is the writing and publishing of the book “Occupational Safety and Health online, how to find reliable information” (third edition, 2016; free to download from ldoh.net in English, Spanish and Turkish) to provide guidance on searching techniques. Hundreds of printed copies are distributed and more than 600 free digital book copies are downloaded from our website. In addition, many digital copies are in circulation and used in different parts of the world. The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (USA) published a very positive review of the book in April 2019, recommending the book. The open access article Where to find evidence-based information on OSH has been published January 2021 in the Annals of Global Health (F van Dijk, Y Caraballo-Arias) to find via https://annalsofglobalhealth.org/articles/10.5334/aogh.3131/.
Another activity of LDOH is the organization of interactive workshops and lessons on this topic such as in Latin America, USA, Central Asia, Indonesia, South Africa, Croatia, Turkey, the Netherlands. A small data collection is made on our activities in this field including a complete set of presentations used in Zagreb, Croatia for a 2.5 day workshop on this topic in December 2018.
