2019 Conference Presentations

Dr Ross Tynan
Research Lead, Everymind

Supporting a healthy workforce has a range of potential benefits: improved employee performance and morale, improved safety, cost benefits, and broader social benefits to employees, their families and community. Achieving such gains requires timely and early access to effective options for providing health in a form that is tailored to the target population and the Industry more broadly. While health screening has been introduced in some sectors of the Coal Industry, innovative, accessible treatment options that wrap around available workplace health care options are needed.

This paper reports on the development and evaluation of a proposed solution; an online portal (‘Health-e Mines’) that provides a direct, real-time link between coal mining employees and the latest evidence based online screening, early intervention, and treatment programs for enhancing mental and physical health. Since January 2018, there have been 817 Health-e Mines site users. This has translated into 1,485 sessions by coal miners visiting the website, who have viewed, on average, two pages per session. The majority of visitors are accessing the site on Sundays at 4am, Mondays 12-3pm, and Wednesday 6-11am. Evaluation data on facilitators and barriers to use of Health-e Mines will also be reported.