Prevention strategies for sickness absence: sick individuals or sick populations?

摘要

Sickness absence mesmerizes many researchers, given the numerous publications on risk factors for sicknessabsence. A large variety of risk factors have been identified, including work-related risk factors such as physicalwork demands and psychosocial work factors (1, 2), unhealthy behaviors such as lack pf physical activity andsmoking (3,4), and chronic health problems (5). A logical next step seems to be the development of a predictionmodel, whereby an individual’s profile on risk factors is converted into a probability on future sickness absence. Inthe past few years, several prediction models have been developed and validated. It is in intriguing question howto use these models in occupational health practice to identify workers at risk for prolonged sickness absencereliably and to act on this.