Occupational Safety and Health Advocacy

Running Head: OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ADVOCACY
Occupational Safety and Health Advocacy
Institution
Student name
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Occupational Safety and Health Advocacy
Affected group
Tracey and Stott (2017) define occupational hazards like chemicals, biological or
physical situations, and circumstances that pose a threat to a health worker at the workplace.
These hazards include exposure to infectious diseases, coming into contact with various harmful
chemicals and chemical products, ergonomically injurious situations such as prolonged standing,
lifting objects or repetitive activities and awkward positions. Nurses may also be exposed to
physical harm when they come into contact with radiations from x-rays, lasers and radioisotopes
and violence from peers or patients. Statistics show that acute care nurses, emergency room
practitioners and infection control nurses are the most susceptible to septicity by contagious
diseases such as TB, flu, AIDS, and Ebola (Stephan et al., 2016). This revelation calls for a need
for affirmative action to enhance occupational health safety especially in the areas identified.
This paper, therefore, presents a health advocacy strategy on control of infectious diseases
infections among acute care nurses in Australia. Herein, the author looks at various occupational
health bodies in and out of Australia and the strategic frameworks and procedures needed in
developing and implementing a health advocacy campaign against occupational health hazards
among the said group of healthcare providers.
Key players
Several organizations and bodies both governmental and non-governmental agencies
advocate, implement and enforce occupational health and safety in Australia and across the
globe. These include Australia Asia worker links, Australasian Legal Information Institute,
Centre for Sleep Research (CFSR), National Research Centre for OHS Regulation, The Workers
Health Centre, Victorian Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (VIOSH), SafetyAtWork

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Occupational Safety and Health Advocacy
Blog, Work Health Safety (OHS) Leadership for All Group, WorkSafe Victoria, and Safe Work
Australia (SWA).
Group organization
Coming up with a concrete objective-oriented advocacy group is no easy task. Numerous
challenges including financial constraints, conflict of interests, and limited resources are just but
a few of the so many challenges a group faces in initial stages (Sudbury & Okazawa-Rey, 2015).
With the problem already defined, the next step will be establishing the advocacy group which
will influence mobilization activities. The group will then come up with strategic goals and
specific target both for individuals and strata. Further, the group shall scheme an action plan and
a schedule of events. The next step will involve capacity building and identifying partners.
Lastly, the implementation will be rolled out and the results evaluated.
Recruitment methods
Non-profit-making movements need volunteers to participate and drive their agenda.
However, as Stephan et al. (2016) observes, finding and recruiting them has proved quite a
challenge in a number of organizations. Shields (1991) thus suggests 3 methods that have stood
the test of challenges and proven to be effective recruitment methods for volunteers. These
include warm body recruitment, target recruitment, and concentric circles recruitment. To help
plan and lay the advocacy strategy, a small number of volunteers at the top management level
will be recruited through the targeted recruitment method. Since the campaign is a nationwide
movement, each state will require coordinators who will escalate the agenda to the grassroots.
This regional representative will be recruited through concentric circles method. As evident, the
campaign needs a large number of volunteers for a short period of time, a warm body
recruitment approach will be used in the last recruitment phase to recruit these individuals.