Occupation and Disease

According to Dembe, physicians may be influenced by such social factors as: the advent of new technologies (computers replacing typewriters, for example); passage of laws establishing workers' compensation; union campaigns and labor activism; public outcry against environmental hazards; cultural stereotyping (some complaints of hearing loss, for example have been linked to ""nervous tendencies"" of women); medical specialization and competition (diagnosis of back pain as a traumatic injury corresponded with the growth of orthopedics after World War I); and media attention.

Allard E. Dembe is assistant professor in the Occupational Health Program of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and deputy director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation National Program Office for Workers' Compensation Health Initiative. He is also an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Work Environment at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.