Occupational Health Management as Potential Element in Combating Social and Regional Inequalities

Kurzfassung/Abstract

The epidemiological transition has been going along with demographic aging since the 1980s; its effects are becoming increasingly present. The legislator has addressed this issue with the introduction of the German Act on the Implementation of Measures of Occupational Safety and Health to Encourage Improvements in the Safety and Health Protection of Workers at Work (ArbSchG, 1996), however companies have reacted only hesitantly with the implementation of occupational health management. This impulse, contrarily, has only been a superficially decisive element in the implementation of the Ottawa Charter in the setting of workplaces in Germany. This process, which has been started slowly, was accelerated by projects and the follow-up legislation, not least by the Prevention Act (PrävG, 2015), which prompted a large number of major social partners to take joint action.
Methods: The contribution is based on a total of four datasets for the years from 2015 to 2019, which were analysed and interpreted on the basis of the model of social and resulting health inequalities.