OHCOW

World Kidney Day
2025-03-14
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is estimated to affect approximately 850 million people worldwide[1]. If left undetected and not treated timely, CKD can progress to kidney failure, leading to severe complications and premature mortality. By 2040, CKD is projected to become the 5th leading cause of years of life lost[2], highlighting the urgent need for global strategies to combat kidney disease.
Populations at high risk for kidney disease should undergo targeted testing.
The major risk factors for kidney disease are:

Diabetes
Hypertension
Cardiovascular disease
Obesity
Family history of kidney disease.

Go to website for more information.
SEE WEBSITE

National Inhalant and Poisons Awareness Week 2025
2025-03-17 08:00 - 2025-03-22 17:00 (America/Toronto)
March 17-22
The third week in March is National Inhalant and Poisons Awareness Week. This prevention week focuses on providing education, resources, and information on risks of poisons and inhalant. Many workplaces have dangers for workers in potentially coming in contact with poisons in its many forms.
What are inhalants?
Although other misused materials can be inhaled, the term inhalants refer to the various substances that people typically take only by inhaling. These substances include:

solvents (liquids that become gas at room temperature)
aerosol sprays
gases
nitrites

One Hit of an Inhalant Can Cause:

Nausea and disorientation
Limb spasms
Loss of consciousness and asphyxiation
Death

More information to come on this topic.

Webinar: New Musculoskeletal Disorder (MSD) Infographic for Agricultural Workers
2025-03-26 12:00 - 13:00
Join us to learn more about OHCOW’s new Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) among Temporary Foreign Agriculture Workers (TFAW) Infographic and the experience and science behind it.
We will discuss the importance of the issue, and the innovative collaboration between OHCOW ergonomists and our temporary foreign agriculture worker outreach team that led to the infographic creation.
We will review the infographic, as well as our associated new worker warm-up wallet card and discuss how both resources can be used with, and by, Ontario temporary foreign agricultural workers.
We will also review our Where Does is Hurt? Body Mapping Workshop for temporary foreign agricultural workers, and discuss how this type of engagement can help better understand where workers may be experiencing aches and pains, whether these might be related to their work, and how we can draw from this information to explore recommendations and strategies for prevention.
Lastly, we will discuss how to access virtual or print copies of our temporary foreign agricultural worker resources, and opportunities to collaborate on, or host, our workshops for workers in your networks.
Presenters will include:

Eduardo Huesca, Project Manager, OHCOW
Melissa Statham, Ergonomist, OHCOW-Windsor Clinic
Andrew Flanagan, Ergonomist, OHCOW-Sarnia Clinic
OHCOW’s TeaMWork Project Temporary Foreign Agricultural Worker Outreach Team

REGISTER TODAY

Global Asbestos Awareness Week
2025-04-01 08:00 - 2025-04-07 17:00
April 1-7 is Global Awareness Week.
Check back for more info.

Parkinson's Awareness Month
2025-04-01 08:00 - 2025-04-30 17:00
Parkinson’s is a complex brain condition, and everyone’s Parkinson’s journey is different. More than 110,000 people in Canada live with Parkinson’s. It can be caused by genetics, but many cases are caused by hazardous exposures, particularly in the workplace.
Stay tune for more info.
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Spring Into Action 2025
2025-04-04 08:30 - 13:00
Health and Safety Forum • Online and In-Person
This HYBRID event took place online and in person at Carpenters Union Local 93, 8560 Campeau Drive, Kanata.
Who should attend: Health care workers, advocates and colleagues, Joint Health & Safety Committee members, useful to all work sectors particularly the trade sector, and anyone interested in Occupational Health and Safety! An opportunity to connect with industry experts and stay informed about the latest trends and best practices in health and safety. Register now and ACT on your commitment to a healthier and safer workplace!
Speakers & Information Sessions:
Dr. Daryl Stephenson, PhD, CCPE, OHCOW Ergonomist
Ergonomics and Manual Materials Handling
Download PDF Slides

André Gauvin, BSc, MHK, CCPE, CIH, OHCOW Occupational Hygienist & Eduardo Huesca, OHCOW Migrant Worker Project Manager
Addressing Heat Stress in Agricultural Workplaces: The Heat Stress Toolkit and Case Study
Download PDF Slides

Carmine Tiano, Director of Occupational Services from the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario
Shifting the Paradigm to Total Worker Health
Download PDF Slides

Meghan Friesen, BA, ROH, OHCOW Occupational Hygienist & Krista Thompson, MHSc, ROH, CRSP, OHCOW Occupational Hygienist
Silica Exposure and Tools of the Trade
Download PDF Slides
Itinerary
8:30 a.m.: Registration / Refreshments 8:30am
8:50 a.m. sharp: Opening
Info sessions
11:30 a.m.: Break / Refreshments
1 p.m.: Closing Remarks

Sponsored by: ODLC Health & Safety Committee and OHCOW Local Outreach Committee

Occupational Health Nurses Week
2025-04-06 08:00 - 2025-04-12 17:00
OHN (Occupational Health Nurses) Week is a national observance each April that celebrates and recognizes members of the occupational and environmental health nursing profession. While some people understand the functions of a nurse in clinical settings, this week serves as a way to bring attention and awareness to the thousands of OHNs who work in promoting and protecting the health of workers in Canada and around the globe. Through case management, coaching and health counseling, health promotion and wellness activities, legal and regulatory compliance, and workplace hazard detection and mitigation, occupational and environmental health nurses improve the health of employees and contribute to a healthy bottom line for businesses.
SEE WEBSITE

World Health Day
2025-04-07
World Health Day, celebrated on 7 April 2025, will kick off a year-long campaign on maternal and newborn health. The campaign, titled Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures, will urge governments and the health community to ramp up efforts to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths, and to prioritize women’s longer-term health and well-being.
WHO and partners will also share useful information to support healthy pregnancies and births, and better postnatal health.
Find out more:
https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-health-day/2025

National Nursing Week
2025-04-12 08:00 - 2025-04-18 17:00
Mark your calendars! National Nursing Week takes place from May 12-18, 2025, and we’re thrilled to announce this year’s theme: The Power of Nurses to Transform Health.
This theme highlights the incredible impact nurses have in shaping health care, driving innovation, and advocating for patient-centred care. Visit this web page often for more details on how we’ll be celebrating the dedication and contributions of nurses across Canada.
National Nursing Week serves as an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the hard work and dedication of nurses across Canada and around the world.
SEE WEBSITE

Canadian National Volunteer week
2025-04-27 08:00 - 2025-05-03 17:00
Volunteers Make Waves
Together, we create ripples of change
#VolunteersMakeWaves #NVW2025
The theme for National Volunteer Week 2025 is Volunteers Make Waves. It highlights the power, impact and importance of individual and collective volunteer efforts across Canada. Like a wave, volunteering is movement building.
Water is in constant motion, always flowing, shifting, and transforming with every powerful wave or quiet ripple. And so is each volunteer’s contribution toward creating impact in our communities.
National Volunteer Week

World Day for Safety and Health at Work
2025-04-28
This year’s World Day for Safety and Health at Work 2025 focuses on “Revolutionizing health and safety: the role of AI and digitalization at work”.
This theme will examine various new technologies through an occupational safety and health lens, including:
Advanced robots
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning
Exoskeletons
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
Internet of Things (IoT)
Virtual and Augmented Reality
The campaign will also shed light on new work practices, such as automation of tasks, big data analysis, smart digital systems and workers management through AI.
New technologies have also given rise to new types of work, such as digital platform work and remote work/hybrid work/telework, which will be further examined.
https://www.ilo.org/meetings-and-events/world-day-safety-and-health-work-2025

Day of Mourning
2025-04-28
Read OHCOW’s Day of Mourning Statement here.
See more information on the Worker’s Health and Safety Centre Web Page, including public ceremonies across Ontario on this important day.

International Workers' Day
2025-05-01
International Workers’ Day is an opportunity to celebrate the union movement’s victories and recognize the importance of continuing our global fight for labour rights, equity and economic justice.
For more than a century International Workers’ Day has acknowledged and celebrated the achievements of the trade union movement. The list is long and includes the establishment of employment standards, occupational health and safety legislation, and old age security.
CUPE’s page for IWD
UFCW page for IWD

National Physician's Day
2025-05-01
https://www.cma.ca/about-us/what-we-do/press-room/cma-recognizes-national-physicians-day

Mayday! Mayday! 2025 Workplace Mental Health Webinars
2025-05-01 10:30 - 12:00
Welcome to the 9th annual Mayday, Mayday Symposium, which continues to build on the double meaning of it’s title (International labour day + Universal cry for help) to translate the knowledge and experience of our OHCOW professional staff, partners and guest speakers to increase psycho-social hazard awareness and prevention of related harm and injury to workers. The five week webinar series format allows for an ever-expanding audience from around the world, all gathering to learn, share experience and generate ideas. Register today and join the discussion. Integrating Initiative: WMH into OHS.

The Mayday! Mayday! Sessions will occur Thursday mornings from 10:30 pm to 12:00 pm.
MAY 1 SESSION:
Fundamental truth: Workplace Mental Health is Occupational Health
Public Sector Perspective: Experience, Resources & Psychosocial <-> MSD prevention case study
New tool to help: CCOHS Business Safety Portal & other WMH & OHS resources

SEE MORE INFO AND REGISTER

Construction Safety Week
2025-05-05 08:00 - 2025-05-09 17:00
Construction Safety Week Website
Bring Safety Week to life at your company. You can access and download all of the tools and resources you’ll need to get started on planning your week, including tips, best practices and all of the Safety Week branded materials to support your events and communication. All materials for Safety Week 2025 will be available soon.

Safety and Health Week
2025-05-05 08:00 - 2025-05-10 17:00
Safety and Health Week Website
Safety and Health Week is an annual initiative aimed at raising awareness about the importance of preventing injury and illness in the workplace, at home, and in the community. The initiative focuses on employers, employees, partners, and the public working together to create safe workplaces and communities.
Join the conversation this hash#SafetyAndHealthWeek!

Mental Health Week
2025-05-05 08:00 - 2025-05-11 17:00
CMHA Mental Health Week Website
This Mental Health Week (May 5-11), the CMHA is encouraging people across Canada to look beyond the surface and see the whole person. By embracing honesty and vulnerability, we open the door to deeper connections and the mental health benefits that come with it. In doing so, we can create a ripple effect of courage and understanding across the country.
See OHCOW’s Mayday Mayday Webinar series for more information.

World Asthma Day
2025-05-06
World Asthma Day (Canada) Website
Lighting Landmarks Across Canada Shine Blue for World Asthma Day & Asthma Awareness Month
This World Asthma Day (Tuesday, May 6) and Asthma Awareness Month, iconic landmarks across Canada will illuminate in blue, standing in solidarity with the more than 4.6 million Canadians living with asthma and in remembrance of the 300 lives tragically lost to the disease each year.
If you’re near one of these landmarks, snap a photo and share it using #WorldAsthmaDay and #AsthmaAwarenessMonth to raise awareness and help put asthma in the spotlight!
Participating Landmarks:
Ontario
CN Tower*| Toronto
Niagara Falls | Niagara (Illuminated at 10 PM for 15 minutes)
Peace Bridge | Fort Erie

Mayday! Mayday! 2025 Workplace Mental Health Webinars
2025-05-08 08:00 - 17:00, 2025-05-08 10:00 - 12:00
Welcome to the 9th annual Mayday, Mayday Symposium, which continues to build on the double meaning of it’s title (International labour day + Universal cry for help) to translate the knowledge and experience of our OHCOW professional staff, partners and guest speakers to increase psycho-social hazard awareness and prevention of related harm and injury to workers. The five week webinar series format allows for an ever-expanding audience from around the world, all gathering to learn, share experience and generate ideas. Register today and join the discussion.
May 8 Session:
Lessons Learned – Workplace Experiences & Stories

More info and Register

National Nursing Week
2025-05-12 08:00 - 2025-05-18 17:00
Ontario Nurses Association Website
During Nursing Week, we celebrate the dedication, expertise, and achievements of registered nurses (RNs), registered practical nurses (RPNs) and nurse practitioners (NPs.) This year, for ONA nurses, Nursing Week is being held May 12-18.
Our 2025 Nursing Week theme is:
Raising our voices. Speaking the truth.
Faire entendre nos voix. Dire la vérité.
This theme captures our growing momentum in telling Ontarians the brutal truth. We find ourselves at a crossroads. Never before has it been so important to speak out and speak the truth about what is going on in our health-care system.
Nursing Week offers a great opportunity to do more than celebrate. We can also amplify our concerns and our bold ideas for solutions. We know the value of the experienced and highly skilled nurses in our health-care system, and how it is endangered if we don’t address recruitment and retention of the nursing workforce.

Global Accessibility Awareness Day
2025-05-15
Go to the GAAD website
The GAAD Foundation
The GAAD Foundation was launched in 2021 to mark GAAD’s 10th anniversary. Its mission is to disrupt the culture of technology and digital product development to include accessibility as a core requirement.
What is Digital Accessibility?
Digital accessibility refers to the ability of people with disabilities/impairments to independently consume and/or interact with digital (e.g., web, mobile) applications and content. Take a look at WebAIM’s The WebAIM Million, for a current snapshot of trends and issues regarding web accessibility.

Mayday Mayday Workplace Mental Health Webinar Series Week 3
2025-05-15 10:30 - 12:00
Assessment assessment: Exploring Survey Options

The psychosocial work environment: what, why important, how measure?
Speaker: Dr. Peter Smith, President, IWH
An International survey of (English) psychosocial risk surveys
Speaker: Daryl Stephenson, Ergonomist, OHCOW
Ontario Workplace Wellbeing Survey insights and experience
Speaker: Katrina Burch, Psychological H&S Advisor/Assessor, PSHSA

Open discussion follows.

MORE INFO AND REGISTER

Mayday Mayday Workplace Mental Health Webinar Week 4
2025-05-22 10:30 - 12:00
Research Results: Finding & Building on Knowledge

Mindful Workplace Mental Health: Accommodation & Return to Work
Speaker: Dr. Behdin Nowrouzi-Kia, Occ Sci & OT, Univ. of Toronto
Job quality and its relationship to ‘deaths of despair’
Speaker: Dr. Faraz Shahidi, Associate Scientist, IWH
Work-related suicide. An international social justice analysis
Speakers: Steven Bittle, Professor, Criminology, Univ. of Ottawa; Sarah Waters, Professor French Studies, Univ of Leeds

Open discussion follows.
MORE INFO AND REGISTER

AccessAbility Week
2025-05-25 08:00 - 2025-05-30 17:00
The AODA page for Accessibilty Week
During National AccessAbility Week, we recognize the ways people with disabilities take part in their communities.
Citizens with disabilities are sometimes prevented from full involvement in their communities because they encounter accessibility barriers. Barriers limit the things people with disabilities can do, the places they can go, or the ways other community members interact with them.
National AccessAbility Week gives us the chance to honour people committed to removing these barriers. Some of these activists have disabilities, while others are non-disabled allies who understand what their fellow community members are capable of. When we break down barriers, we make sure that people with disabilities have the same opportunities as their fellow community members.

Mayday Mayday Workplace Mental Health Webinar Series Week 5
2025-05-29 10:30 - 12:00
Canadian Conversation: Mental Injury Prevention across the Country

Quebec Experience and Opportunities
Speaker: Michel Hébert, Medical Director, Telus Health

TBA
Mental Health Injuries in BC’s Social Services Sector: A growing concern
Speakers: Suncha Satney, Psychological H&S Consultant, CSSHSA; Tigran Bajgoric, CEO, CSSHSA

Open discussion follows.

REGISTER

Injured Workers Day
2025-06-01
Every year on June 1st, Ontarians pay respect to the hundreds of workers who have died or become injured while working on their job sites. The Ontario Injured Workers Day is an opportunity to recognize the individuals who have suffered injuries and fatalities as a result of their workplace conditions.
In Ontario, we owe a debt to Sudbury MPP and NDP Labour critic Jamie West, who pushed to have June 1 officially recognized as Ontario’s Injured Workers Day. Last year he introduced his Private Member’s Bill, Bill 118, the Injured Workers Day Act, in the Ontario legislature. Because of this Act, June 1 of every year will be formally recognized as Injured Workers Day. See OHCOW page about this achievement.
Read Bill 118, Injured Workers Day Act, 2024, S.O. 2024 here.
See the Ontario Federation of Labour Page here.
See the UFCW Injured Workers page here.
EVENTS:
June 1st is (officially) Injured Workers Day. On June 1st 1983, more than 3000 injured & ill workers and allies crowded the lawn at Queen’s Park demanding dignity and respect in the face of corporatization and cuts. This June 1 at 11am is another gathering on that same spot.
Over 40 years later, injured & ill workers will again gather Sunday June 1st to celebrate our strength and continue to fight for law and policy reform. Thanks to Bill 118 The Injured Workers’ Day Act, June 1st this year (and every year going forward), will be officially proclaimed Injured Workers’ Day by the Legislature of Ontario.

Brain Injury Awareness Month
2025-06-01 08:00 - 2025-06-30 17:00
This June, during Brain Injury Awareness Month, the National organization Brain Injury Canada is going Beyond the Injury to raise awareness of brain injury and its profound impacts on all aspects of daily life, for individuals and for family/caregivers. The goal is to generate more national awareness and understanding of brain injury, and to raise money to continue developing programs and resources that will improve the lives of all Canadians living with brain injury.
Get More info here.
Northern Brain Injury Association
The Northern Brain Injury Association of BC has a webpage about Preventing Workplace Brain Injury. It states that on average one million Canadians are injured, or become sick/diseased by their workplace each year, and out of that about 10% will result in a brain injury. Read more here.

National Indigenous History Month
2025-06-01 08:00 - 2025-06-30 17:00
June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada, a time to recognize the rich history, heritage, resilience and diversity of First Nations, Inuit and Métis.
See the Government of Canada’s page acknowledging National Indigenous History month here.
See events that are happening in Toronto here.
