Modifications to Objectives and Subobjectives

The following discussion highlights the modifications, including changes, additions, and deletions, to this focus area's objectives and subobjectives as a result of the midcourse review.

Modifications were made to two occupational safety and health objectives. For elevated blood lead levels (20-7), the objective was reworded from "reduce the number of persons who have elevated blood lead concentrations from work exposures" to "reduce the proportion of adults who have elevated blood lead concentrations." The baseline was also modified to reflect the change in measurement. For needlestick injuries (20-10), the objective was revised to reflect the population that can be monitored by currently available data sources: "health care workers" was limited to "hospital-based health care workers." Studies are being funded that will provide more information on needlestick injuries among health care workers who are not hospital based.¹²

Because the data source for work-related assaults (20-6) was redesigned, the baseline for this objective was changed from 0.85 to 1.10 assaults per 100 workers aged 16 years and older to better characterize the population at risk.

The developmental objective regarding work-related, noise-induced hearing loss (20-11) will be tracked using data from the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, which has been collecting hearing loss data since 2004. By the end of the decade, two data points are anticipated for establishing a baseline and assessing a trend.

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