• To integrate the capabilities of the occupational health system into the nation’s public health preparedness and response effort;

• To incorporate occupational safety and health professionals as key members of the public health infrastructure;

• To enhance preparedness of the occupational health community to protect workers and their families; and

• To maintain business continuity

Background and Significance

An estimated 125 million Americans go to work every day. At many workplaces, employers and their employees rely on occupational health providers for health information and care. Occupational and environmental health professionals represent a workplace health system that parallels the general public health system in dealing with threats, hazards, and injuries unique to workplace organizations. Following the World Trade Center and anthrax terrorist attacks in the fall of 2001, the demands on and expectations of occupational health professionals changed dramatically. Their scope of responsibility and the requirements for their expertise and instant response grew from dealing with workplace-specific hazards and injuries to being prepared to confront mass-casualty weapons and other large-scale threats to the workplace. Occupational health professionals now need to make themselves expert advisors on chemical, biological and radiological threats as well as on naturally occurring emerging and reemerging infectious diseases.

One important role of the Occupational Health Disaster Expert Network is to receive and to provide high-quality information on threats, vulnerabilities, opportunities, and steps to improve the protection of workers and their environments. It will accomplish this in part by providing up-and-down links of occupational health professionals with the HHS (Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC's NIOSH), the Healthcare and Public Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (HPH-ISAC) and the Infrastructure Monitoring, Analysis, and Coordination (IMAC) branch of the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) directorate of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). OHDEN will also provide lateral links between occupational health professionals on the front lines of disaster response for workplaces.

OH professionals are in a unique position to supplement ongoing health surveillance activities. To be able to fulfill these responsibilities, the OH community must have access to preparedness and threat information and a secure communications link to communicate with fellow OH professionals as well as HHS and DHS.

OHDEN is the embodiment of the Occupational Health Advisory Committee (OH AC)'s activities. It represents a dynamic network of professionals and applicable resources.

Content:

• Repository of selected and targeted references

• Library of reviewed web content

• Active community of credentialed experts

• Professional forum for planning, training, and response

• Communication network for urgent alerts

An essential resource to enable occupational health to fulfill its potential as a parallel public-health network to preserve the critical infrastructure of the nation’s workforce and productivity.

OHDEN in development

OHDEN_Demonstration (May 2005, 10 Meg)

Links for registered and vetted OHDEN members: 
For those not registered and approved for the the OHDEN development and testing effort, the web-links above will reach only a rather inhospitable sign-in request.

Here for the secure entrance to the HSIN-HPH (Homeland Security Information Network, Health & Public Health sector portal.

Here for the Occupational Health internal sub-portal (the functioning OHDEN site).

Here for technical support for the HSIN-HPH site. This is a 24/7 resource, and also available by phone: (703) 674-3003. They can help with bunged passwords / login problems and navigation problems.