The European Union should increase its focus on the workplace as a setting for preventing chronic disease, according to the conclusions of a European Network for Workplace Health Promotion initiative. Early detection is crucial, and member states should develop and boost screening programmes for the most common diseases, it suggests.
There should be a policy shift at both EU and national level away from focusing on what people with chronic diseases cannot do at work to a capability-based approach, addressing the discrimination that such people often face and raising the importance of return to work on policy agenda.
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The rehabilitation and retention of workers with chronic diseases often involves many people and agencies, but needs coordinating in a case-managed approach, a concluding report of the initiative suggests. Random collaboration between these parties, coupled with unclear role profiles, wastes resources and increases the risk that the employee with a chronic disease becomes a “pinball in the profession”, it adds.
European Network for Workplace Health Promotion (2013). “Recommendations from ENWHP’s ninth initiative: Promoting healthy work for employees with chronic illness – public health and work”.
