Health Work and Well-Being - An Opportunity Missed

This paper discusses the legacy of the Black review (2008) and its impact on employer practice in occupational health. Working for a Healthier Tomorrow called for a paradigm shift in occupational health, from a primary orientation around treatment to a prevention and promotion perspective. In essence, an extension of the established risk management tradition, and a shift of emphasis from individuals to systems. Yet mainstream employer practice remains focused on treatment, with the perspective on prevention, almost universally, limited to individual-focused lifestyle health promotion issues. It is argued that, in part, this situation reflects the review's partial perfective on the scope for prevention, the limitations of its public health perspective on the scope for achieving behavioural and cultural change and the subsequent policy agenda's failure to offer a vision of employer good practice.