Lay summary
It has been estimated that each year there are between 700-1000 deaths from occupational disease, particularly cancer, respiratory disease, and ischaemic heart disease. There are also 17-20,000 new cases of work-related disease. Despite a large amount of data being collected by various agencies, the surveillance of occupational disease remains incomplete and uncoordinated, creating major gaps in the evidence base for policy development. This project will involve: (i) a review of the literature on occupational health surveillance; (ii) the development of a robust set of indicators feasible and valid for the monitoring of occupational disease in New Zealand; (iii) the development of a concept-driven occupational disease surveillance system based on existing data sets to describe the trends and prevalence of occupational disease in New Zealand; and (iv) the testing of the surveillance system with one long latency disease (cancer) and two shorter latency diseases (asthma and dermatitis).