MSD Solutions Lab promotes holistic worker health through insights and innovation.
Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are the most common workplace injury worldwide, impacting millions of workers each year and affecting their quality of life both on and off the job. As the National Safety Council commemorates the 30th anniversary of National Safety Month and highlights the importance of holistic worker health, we’re reflecting on five years of progress from the MSD Solutions Lab – and what lies ahead.
The MSD Solutions Lab was created five years ago with a clear mission to transform how organizations understand, prevent and ultimately eliminate musculoskeletal disorders. That mission came to life in June 2021 through a philanthropic donation from Amazon, empowering NSC to launch a first-of-its-kind initiative dedicated to addressing MSDs at scale.
Built on collaboration, credible research and innovation, the Lab was designed to engage stakeholders across industries and identify solutions that can meaningfully reduce injury risk. From the beginning, research has been the heart of the Lab, guiding decisions, shaping tools and advancing MSD prevention across the broader safety community.
Early work focused on establishing an evidence-based foundation. This included partnering with scientific and industry partners, developing educational resources and launching new studies.
A key milestone was a comprehensive systematic review of MSD prevention interventions. This analysis examined the past decade of research, highlighted gaps in existing research and identified the critical need for broader innovation.
Building on those insights, the Lab introduced the MSD Solutions Index – a groundbreaking benchmarking tool that helps organizations assess their MSD prevention efforts. Developed through peer-reviewed research, risk assessment tools and expert input, the Index provides MSD Pledge members – a global employer-led initiative to improve workplace safety – with a free, personalized report highlighting strengths and opportunities across three areas: risk reduction, safety culture, and innovation and collaboration.
The Index also supports annual community reports, offering snapshot and year-over-year insights into MSD prevention progress across participating organizations. At its core, this work is about helping workers go home safe and healthy every day.
Over time, the Lab expanded its research portfolio, publishing white papers and reports on timely topics, such as nonphysical risk factors, the utility of artificial intelligence in MSD prevention and more.
To help translate research into practice, the Lab launched the Safety Innovation Challenge, as well as the Research to Solutions and Pilot Grant Programs. These initiatives support industry partners in developing, piloting and scaling emerging technologies and interventions across industries.
As research efforts grew, the MSD Solutions Commons was launched – a community-powered library of strategies and solutions to identify and mitigate MSD risks. The Commons houses case studies from a variety of organizations, offering practical, real-world insights into implementing emerging technologies and other interventions.
Each research effort builds on the last, shaped by feedback from the MSD Solutions Lab Advisory Council, MSD Pledge members and the broader safety community. This collaboration has helped guide research to better understand specific industries, risks or approaches to MSD prevention, like participatory ergonomics. Recently, the Lab has focused on frontline workers, examining their experiences with MSD prevention initiatives and new technologies.
To date, the Lab has published more than 50 publicly available, evidence‑based resources and has helped lead high impact conversations through conferences, webinars and key industry forums.
In the process of addressing MSD risk, the MSD Solutions Lab helped establish more than new tools and technologies, it helped build a repeatable model for safety innovation at NSC. Through deliberate sourcing of solutions, structured pilot and research grant programs and a strong emphasis on evaluation and learning, the lab created a consistent way to move from research questions to real-world applications.
And this work is far from over. Building on the MSD Solutions Lab’s success, NSC is doubling down on research as a core driver of safety impact and using evidence not only to understand risk, but to guide innovation, inform decision making and accelerate change across industries. Future research will continue to explore the connection between MSDs and serious incidents and fatalities (SIFs), deepen our understanding of non‑physical risk factors and examine the growing role of AI and other emerging technologies in protecting workers.
Learn more and join us in building safer, healthier workplaces for everyone. National Safety Month is a great time to take action, and you can access a month’s worth of free resources at nsc.org/nsm.
With a century-long legacy, the National Safety Council is a global center for safety expertise. Let's work together to align resources. We look forward to learning about ways we can join efforts to expand safety everywhere!
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