Dear colleagues,

It is with great sadness that we inform you of the death of Patrick Loisel on Friday, August 26 in Montreal. The community of work disability researchers that Patrick founded is in grief. For many of us, Patrick was a guide, a teacher, a mentor, and a friend. He inspired the work, career and lives of many students and researchers, with a deep sense of benevolence, dedication and simplicity. We share the grief of his passing, and the desire to keep his memory alive by building on his impressive legacy.

Prof. Patrick Loisel was a pioneer and founding father in the field of disability prevention research. First, he initiated and led the groundbreaking Sherbrooke study in Quebec, in the nineties of the former century. In 2003 he developed, started and led the international Work Disability Prevention CIHR strategic training program for young researchers and professionals in this research field. More than 110 trainees and their 30 program mentors from all over the world came to the Longueuil campus of Université de Sherbrooke in Montreal, and later to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health of the University of Toronto for 12 years (2003-2015). Patrick Loisel together with an international group of mentors taught and inspired them to learn about and put into practice work disability prevention and principles of transdisciplinarity. He was also the first chairman of the ICOH WDPI committee, which was founded under his leadership in Milan in 2006. He has thereby put work disability prevention & integration within the ICOH on the map worldwide. Since then he has (co-)organized a large number of ICOH WDPI conferences in Angers, Groningen, Amsterdam, Toronto and Odense. He took the initiative and was (co-)editor of the handbook of Work disability prevention & management.

Unfortunately, Prof. Loisel's health had weakened in recent years and he was unable to continue his work and attend conferences. For this reason, there was at the last ICOH WDPI congress in 2019 a tribute to all his work and contributions to our research field & community. To express our gratitude to him and his legacy, the ICOH WDPI initiated the Prof. Patrick Loisel prize for Best Early Career Researcher oral presentation and Best poster presentation. In this way he will remain in our thoughts forever.

Many of us lose a friend in him. He was always full of interest in his students and mentors. With visible pleasure he used to stand before us as students and mentors every morning during the CIHR WDP program to summarize and discuss new insights from the day before. Many will remember when we discussed these « AHA ! » moments from the day before, and how his eyes used to twinkle. We owe him a lot as the pioneer, visionair & founding father of our WPDI research field & community. He will live forever in our work & thoughts. He is the giant in the WDP research field on whose shoulders we can stand now in our research and practice. May we be all inspired by his humanity.

Our thoughts and condolences go out to his wife Mariana and his family

Han Anema & Jean-Baptiste Fassier

We are looking for a highly motivated individual with knowledge and some experiences in doing mixed study. Funding for this position is made available through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

This position is available under the leadership of Dr. Manal Alzghoul, School of Nursing, and in association with Enhancing the Prevention of Injury and Disability (EPID) @ Work Research Institute.

View the details about this opportunity

EPID@Work is very pleased to share share that our paper on the WSIB experiences, impacts and service needs of injured/ill workers with Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention in Canada: Research, Policy and Practice is out as of today

Kara Polson, PhD Student, was successful in her application to the SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant Competition: Emerging Asocial Society. 

The project is titled:  Virtual Work From Home & Mental Well-being: A Scoping Review, $29,923.

With virtual work from home being on the rise, in combination with the large-scale adoption of working from home due to the present-day pandemic, the need to better understand the impacts of virtual work from home has become significant. The body of evidence on the implications of working from a virtual home office has grown and so too has the need for synthesis of the available knowledge. Although several studies review the implications of working remotely from a central organization, a structured scoping review has not been completed in this area. Further, a review summarizing and conceptualizing the various effects of virtual workplace outcomes as they relate to mental well-being is not readily available. As a result, the proposed study aims to identify, and summarize the findings of all relevant individual
sources related to this topic. The overall goal of this study is to make the available evidence more accessible and to develop a conceptual model illustrating the relationships between virtual work outcomes and mental well-being. We are conducting a broad-based scoping review of both the quantitative and qualitative literature on virtual work outcomes and mental well-being, with the general aim of synthesising the literature produced over the past 10 years.

The Research team consists of Kara Polson, (Primary Investigator), Dr. Vicki Kristman, (Administrative Primary Investigator, Dr. Lynn Martin (Co-investigator), and Brianna Belanger (MPH student and Research Assistant).