Newsletter Task Group Report

Send this page Print Increase font Decrease font

Proposal for the ICOH Newsletter design and distribution from the Newsletter task group of the ICOH board
(Linnéa Lillienberg, Frank Rose, Tee Guidotti, Tar Ching Aw)

The newsletter task group proposes the following layout and suggested contents for the ICOH newsletter.
The group would welcome comments from ICOH members on these proposals.

The ICOH home page on the Web

  • Introduction
  • The ICOH Website
  • Newsletter
  • Publications
  • Links
  • Future contributions

Proposed Contents of the ICOH Newsletter

  • The Presidents page
  • Table of Contents
  • A list of Board Members with addresses including e-mail
  • ICOH Update - Overviews
  • Articles like those on the website to-day e.g.
    • Occupational Health & Development - Mr. Kaj Elgstrand
    • Occupational Safety & Health Systems in Lithuania - E. Jankauskas
    • Overview of Occupational Health in Ghana - J.Y. Sarpong
    • Worklife 2000 in Progress - Lena Sköld
    • Occupational Health Practice in Greece - Theodore Bazas
  • ICOH Congresses
    • Singapore 2000 - update
    • Brazil 2003, Italy 2006, 2009 (Japan?)
  • ICOH-Board activities
    • Short update/reports from task groups
  • ICOH Scientific Committees
    • Activities
    • Conferences (advertising, short summaries/proceedings from conference)
    • Position papers
  • ICOH Working Groups
    • Activities
    • Conferences (advertising, short summaries/proceedings from conference)
    • Position papers
  • Other news about ICOH activities
  • Networks
  • Co-operation with WHO, ILO, IEEA, IOHA
  • Debate about certain issues from ICOH members - e.g. How to improve the activities in the SC?
  • Citations, obituaries etc.
  • Any other business
  • Diary dates

Some ideas about the format of the home page:

The ICOH Website should be separate from the Newsletter. The Website should be broader based and form the main channel for communication between ICOH, its members and others interested in ICOH activities. The Newsletter should be restricted to items of news and be updated periodically, which means that new items should be added when received. Old items should be discarded when they have past their shelf life e.g. after 3 months.

Some ideas about how to get news/contributions for the Newsletter:

It is quite well known that most members just do not send in information to newsletters about activities, which could be of interest to many members unless forced or at least asked to do so. It might be a good idea for the President to have a list of people who are responsible for updating and producing contributions for the newsletter. This list could e.g. contain the chairs of the board members task groups, the chairs of the Scientific Committees and the Working groups. The President could send a reminder by mail to these people every second or third month asking for contributions. Besides all ICOH members should of course be asked to contribute as well. It might be important to have a "Newsletter Team" including people from the Website Committee, who read (scrutinize) the contributions and decide if they should be published. It might also be enough if just the Website Committee are given this responsibility.

How to distribute a hard copy of the newsletter to members without access to the Internet?

Some ICOH members do not have access to the Internet. We do not know how many but these people might be the ones who need the newsletter and the updates most. It might be seen as arrogant if ICOH does not try to reach these people. Our proposal is that we should ask the National Secretaries to investigate how many and which of the members in their country do not have access to the Internet. The National Secretaries should then be responsible for distribution of a "paper copy" to those members. The Website Committee or the Newsletter Team should send out a new version of the Newsletter by e-mail to the National Secretaries for distribution periodically, when the contents have changed significantly from the last version.

The National Secretaries could send an account of postage costs to the ICOH secretariat once or twice a year
for re-imbursement.