Elinson L, Yeung K S
Medical and Occupational Disease Policy Branch, Ontario Workers' Compensation Board, Toronto, Canada.
Scand J Work Environ Health. 1995;21 Suppl 2:111-4.
The Ontario Workers' Compensation Board develops policy for diseases by considering scientific information within legal, political, and social contexts. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process used to develop a policy for lung cancer among gold miners and to examine the extent to which this process assists the development of similar guidelines for workers with silica dust exposure. The scientific and policy questions are similar, both requiring consultation with stakeholders. To improve the development process for the gold miner policy, consultation for silica and lung cancer needs to be more inclusive. The resulting procedures would also need to be precise enough to assist adjudicators to make decisions without limiting their ability to decide each claim on the merits of the case. The major challenge is to ensure that the final policy is scientifically and legally supportable and acceptable to both workers and employers.
安大略省工人赔偿委员会通过在法律、政治和社会背景下考虑科学信息来制定疾病政策。本文的目的是描述为金矿工人制定肺癌政策所采用的过程，并研究该过程在多大程度上有助于为接触矽尘的工人制定类似指南。科学和政策问题相似，都需要与利益相关者进行协商。为改进金矿工人政策的制定过程，关于矽尘与肺癌的协商需要更具包容性。由此产生的程序还需要足够精确，以协助裁决者做出决策，同时又不限制他们根据案件 merits 对每项索赔进行裁决的能力。主要挑战是确保最终政策在科学和法律上是可支持的，并且为工人和雇主双方所接受。
