Introduction: Evidence-based prevention (EBP) is gaining growing interest among the international scientific community in the field of Occupational Health. In order to ascertain the commitment that has been made in Italy to participation in EBPR, we conducted a systematic review of scientific publications on efficacy evaluations in Italy.
Methods: We hand-searched journals and interrogated the PubMed database to identify reports of studies evaluating interventions designed to improve workers' health in Italy between 1990 and 2006. The selected articles were classified by institutional category (of the first author), intervention methodology, study design, type of risk factor, and occupational sector.
Results: We found 23 eligible publications in the Italian language and 9 in English. The most frequent study-design was pre-/post-intervention evaluation; 3 studies were randomized trials. The interventions were aimed mainly at controlling the effects of chemical hazards and noise; health-care settings were the most frequent. We found only 2 studies (1 in English) evaluating the efficacy of interventions targeting injury prevention.
Discussion: The systematic approach of EBP can be applied to most occupational health interventions. These results may contribute to the debate on methodology and outcomes in the scientific community.