Guest blog by Dr Lara Shemtob
I caught up with SOM President Prof Neil Greenberg at the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine conference in Chicago in April. We compared notes on learning points from the conference, and our conversation turned to what UK occupational health has to offer globally. There were four areas we thought the UK demonstrated strength and leadership internationally.
UK academic and research capacity. Research is a cornerstone of occupational health, without which we will lack the evidence to develop practice. In the UK, funders such as the National Institute for Health and Care Research and wider government investment continue to fund work and health research with over £30m committed in the past three years. There is also Colt Foundation support. New centers of excellence, including the London Centre for Work and Health and Scottish Centre for Work and Health, have been established with networking at the academic forum for work and health.
The UK hosts leading journals such as the Journal of Occupational Medicine which attracts submissions from around the world. Do consider submitting an article and they welcome peer reviewers, with workshops on authorship and peer review – if you are interested, contact Assistant Editor Angela Burnett at omj@som.org.uk. Also you can book onto these research master classes with the London Centre for Work and Health:
- Research Master Class 1 - Using Critical Appraisal Skills and reviewing a paper from Occupational Medicine, Friday 26th June 1-2.30pm - register here.
- Research Master Class 2 - How to write a paper for Occupational Medicine, Wednesday 30th September 1-2.30pm - register here.
Innovative UK postgraduate training. Workforce challenges are a global challenge with low occupational physician/working population ratios and an aging workforce with poor talent pipelines. In some countries, gaps are being filled with professionals with lower standards of training with a risk of the quality of practice declining.
The UK has shown creativity in tackling workforce challenges with government investment supporting qualifications such as the diploma in occupational medicine, new routes to national training with commercial providers and a CESR/portfolio route. UK leaders continue to advocate for stronger occupational health representation within undergraduate medical curricula - important to build the future multidisciplinary pipeline. US medical school and postgraduate training systems by contract are less centralised, making it more challenging.
UK as an international collaborator. Throughout the conference, UK colleagues led sessions covering leadership, education, clinical practice, and workforce development. This willingness to share internationally remains something the UK is adding value in terms of facilitating occupational health change and improving work and health outcomes globally.
The SOM has a lively international membership and a number of international projects. SOM works closely with the International Occupational Medicine Society Collaborative (IOMSC) and supports the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH) to realise the potential in international collaboration. There is also an international session at the SOM/FOM Conference, 15-17th June 2026 in Nottingham with an International Group Session on Informal mining, and presentations from Dr Maria Borda, Colombian Occupational Medicine Society and Dr Moyo, Baines Occupational Health, Zimbabwe.
UK leadership. Compared with the US, where clinical practice, leadership, and policy work can be fragmented across states and institutions, the UK benefits from a unified professional structure around occupational health with a recognition of the value of multidisciplinary working. In both the UK and the US, clinicians in leadership roles do a lot outside of clinical practice. In the US context it was harder to maintain a sense of cohesion across these different activities, which is something that the UK specialty does well. UK occupational health professionals have clear professional and educational infrastructure around them that is responding to the changing multidisciplinary needs of the specialty. Leadership competences produced by SOM are a case in point, here. The SOM Leadership Academy is currently inviting expressions of interest for launching an Emerging Leaders Learning Series. This is an opportunity to join a small group for four 60-minute online sessions over four months, designed to support your development through shared learning and real-world challenges. Complete the survey here.
Ongoing engagement between FOM, the National School of Occupational Health and SOM provide a clear shared narrative for the specialty, helping align clinical standards, professional development, and the broader agenda of improving work and health.
OH in the UK specialty is not without its challenges, but it has assets such as academic credibility, flexible training pathways, effective collaboration and leadership. Those strengths give agility to build the specialty to evolve with the future of work, with evidence-based multidisciplinary clinical practice at its core.