NIOSH Strategic Plan

Overview

The NIOSH Strategic Plan reports the Institute's research and service goals for fiscal years (FY) 2019–2026. These goals address a wide range of occupational health and safety hazards, affecting a workforce that constantly changes. Jobs in the U.S. economy continue to shift from manufacturing to services, have longer hours, an aging workforce, and reduced job security. These issues are a major challenge for NIOSH's limited resources for research priorities.

NIOSH recognizes that new issues may emerge or become more important during the plan's timeframe. Goals may be retired because they have been achieved. Priorities may shift in response to changing conditions. NIOSH will add or remove issues based on current or anticipated burden, need, and impact and move resources to address these changes.

Funding priority will be given to extramural research applications that clearly identify the strategic and intermediate goals their proposed work will address or support.

The NIOSH Strategic Plan: FYs 2019–2026 provides a breakdown of seven strategic goals and how they impact each industrial sector. It provides information on how to understand, use, and apply to these programs.

How the plan was developed

NIOSH organizes its research into sector and cross-sectors (programs that benefit several sectors at once) based on the framework provided by the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA).

NIOSH's 10 sector programs focus on industrial sector. Seven cross-sectors programs focus on the major health and safety issues affecting the US working population. They form a 10×7 program grid that is infused with core and specialty programs representing:

• core activities
• mandates
• special emphasis areas
• methodological approaches.

These programs cover a wide range of activities, from basic to applied research.

NIOSH determines research priorities based on the "Burden, Need, and Impact Method (BNI Method). There is more detailed information about this method on pages 9 and 215 of the PDF.

Selecting goals

The NIOSH Strategic Plan has three hierarchies of goals, which are strategic, intermediate and activity goals:

• Strategic goals are broad in scope. Goals are based on health and safety outcomes identified by NIOSH's portfolio of research programs.
• Intermediate goals identify improvements and maintenance of service activities. These allow organizations or individuals to take action more easily.
• Activity goals are statements of activities that improve or maintain the timeliness, relevance, and quality of services.

NIOSH organizes its research into four categories that the goals must follow:

• Basic/etiologic
• Intervention
• Implementation science
• Surveillance research.

More details about the Goal Development Process can be found starting on page 10 of the PDF.

Research goals

NIOSH established seven strategic goals that best represent the health and safety issues facing the U.S. workforce:

1. Reduce occupational cancer, cardiovascular disease, adverse reproductive outcomes, and other chronic diseases.
2. Reduce occupational hearing loss.
3. Reduce occupational immune, infectious, and dermal disease.
4. Reduce occupational musculoskeletal disorders.
5. Reduce occupational respiratory disease.
6. Improve workplace safety to reduce traumatic injuries.
7. Promote safe and healthy work design and well-being.

These seven strategic goals are supported by intermediate and activity goals that guide occupational health and safety research priorities and service work.

Service goals

Service activities contribute to the NIOSH mission by providing a service to individuals and organizations outside of NIOSH, support internally to NIOSH staff, or a combination of the two. Some services are mandated by law.

Services can support a single sector (e.g., the Coal Workers' Health Surveillance Program benefits the mining sector), or a cross-sector (e.g., Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) investigates fatalities in a wide range of industries with a variety of causes). NIOSH's service work includes, but is not limited to:

• Respirator approvals
• Health Hazard Evaluations (HHE)
• Radiation dose reconstruction
• Emergency preparedness and response activities, except Disaster Science Responder Research (DSRR) activities
• Global collaborations
• Coal Workers' Health Surveillance Program activites

More information about Service Goals, as well as a full list of service work categories, can be found on page 14 of the PDF.