Background: [corrected] The strategic action plans have been the main preventive activities carried out by the Autonomous Community Governments in relation to occupational injuries in Spain since 1999. This study is aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of these plans.
Methods: A total of 4,714,080 cases of non-fatal traumatic occupational injuries leading to disability having occured within the 1994-2004 period due to mechanical causes and over-exertion at non-publicly owned service and manufacturing companies were included. Based on the annual incidence rates, the percentage of annual change and the 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were estimated for the periods prior to and following the start-up of the Strategic Action Plans by means of negative binomial regression.
Results: The pattern found followed an upward trend during the periods prior to the start-up of the Strategic Actions Plans, followed by a downward trend as of the start-up of these plans. For example, in Aragon, where the Strategic Action Plan was started up in 999, a +5.3% rise was found within the 1994-1999 period, as compared to a -4.9% decrease during the 2000-2004 period. On the Balearic Islands, which started up their Strategic Action Plan in 2002, the corresponding trend was +5.4% for 1994-2001, as compared to -14% for 2002-2004. However, similar trends were found in Madrid (-3.9% for 2000-2004) or in Galicia (-4.8% for 2000-2004), where there is no record of any specific Strategic Action Plan having been gotten under way during the period under study.
Conclusions: These results do not make it possible to attribute the widespread drop in the non-fatal traumatic occupational injury incidence as of 2000 in Spain to the Strategic Action Plans. Possibly other actions of a general nature which may have had a bearing on all of the Autonomous Communities in the same manner (including those which have not developed their own Strategic Action Plans) might explain this drop in the incidence of the occupational injuries selected in this analysis.