Health risk appraisal

Duffy VB, Lanier SA, Hutchins HL, Pescatello LS, Johnson MK and Bartoshuk LM. (2007) Food Preference Questionnaire as a Screening Tool for Assessing Dietary Risk of Cardiovascular Disease within Health Risk Appraisals. J Am Diet Assoc, 107 237-245. 

Obtain a suitable health risk appraisal form or a sample health checklist. Select an appraisal which you feel would best suit individuals who work in a workplace with which you are, or have been, associated. Complete the appraisal in order to establish an overview of your own personal health. From this appraisal, identify two specific aspects of your own health which you feel you either need to, or would like to, modify. 

Van der Pligt, J. (1994). Risk appraisal and health behaviour. In Social Psychology and Health European Perspectives, (D. R. Rutter and L. Quine, et al., Eds), pp. 131-152. Avebury, Aldershot, England. 

Risk appraisal thus includes the scientific assessment of the risks to human health and the environment and an assessment of related concerns as well as social and economic implications (Renn and Walker 2007). The appraisal process should be clearly dominated by scientific analyses - but, in contrast to traditional risk regulation models, the scientific process includes both the natural/technical as well as the social sciences, including economics. The risk appraisal comprises two stages ... 

Chemical threats to human health dictate a careful appraisal of new chemicals. A continued reappraisal of known toxicants Is also needed to ensure that the human health risks are balanced by benefits from the use of these compounds. The toxicity of chemicals Is largely determined by animal experimentation. The risk to man Is estimated by Interspecles extrapolation from animals to man. 

Vogt, T.M., Risk assessment and health hazard appraisal, Ann. Rev. Public Health, 2, 31,... 

Warner, Kenneth E., David Mendez, and Paul N. Courant. 1996. Toward a More Realistic Appraisal of the Lung Cancer Risk from Radon The Effects of Residential Mobility. American Journal of Public Health 86 1222-27. 

The external validity refers to applicability and generalization and is outlined in the section, Applying the Results. The remainder of this section focuses on critically appraising the quality— that is, the internal validity—of individual trials. The internal validity is determined by how well the trial ensures that the known and unknown risk factors are equally distributed between the treatment and control groups. To ensure validity, the conduct of the trial should minimize systematic bias and random error as much as possible to provide results that are as accurate and close to the truth as possible. Four sources of bias are possible in trials of health care interventions selection bias, performance bias, attrition bias, and detection bias. Bias can result in an overestimation or underestimation of the effectiveness of a drug therapy and mislead the reader. While it is beyond... 

Occupational hygiene is defined by the British Occupational Hygiene Society as the applied science concerned with the identification, measurement, appraisement of risk, and control to acceptable standards, of physical, chemical and biological factors arising in or from the workplace which may affect the health or well-being of those at work or in the community. ... 

Today however, the concept of patient safety extends beyond managing risk and not harming a patient. Included in the broad context of patient safety is an understanding that patient treatment must be effective and be economically reasonable. Cost-effective health care is difficult to achieve, but is a goal that is increasingly important worldwide. Physicians and health care teams who monitor outcomes and continuously refine practices, procedures and protocols based on an honest appraisal of results are able to reduce the incidence of complications, improve the outcomes of their patients and, hopefully, reduce costs overall. 

The HSE expresses risk as "the likelihood that the harm from a particular hazard is realised." (para 5 (b)) Health and Safety Commission (1992) Management of Health and Safety at Work 1992 Approved Code of Practice. London HMSO. The Royal Society expresses risk as "the probability that a specified undesirable event will occur in a specified period or as a result of a specified situation." Royal Society Study Group (1992) Risk Analysis, perception and management. London Royal Society. Grimaldi and Simmonds (1984) Safety management. USA RD Irwin, express risk as "the assumed effect of an uncontrolled hazard, appraised in terms of the probability it will happen, the maximum severity of any injuries or damages, and the public s sensitivity to the occurrence." pp 181. 

Donoghue (2001) proposes an interesting further step in relation to the issue of clarifying accountability for action (or inaction) in relation to safety and health issues. The paper suggests that management could be held accountable for injury (or ill-health) incidents to their staff by the use of what is, in effect, retrospective risk assessment. The principle involved is that should the retrospective risk assessment show inadequate control, this should be reflected in the manager s annual performance appraisal. 

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