Introduction: Health and safety education for worker empowerment

This article introduces a special issue of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine dedicated to innovative approaches to worker education in health and safety. Contributors to this issue describe applications of an “empowerment approach” in a wide variety of institutions and settings throughout the United States and Canada. In this article, empowerment education is presented and contrasted with other training methodologies. The article offers suggestions on how to implement this approach, discusses evaluation issues, and summarizes the articles contained in this issue. Explored are preliminary outcomes of using this methodology and implications for developing educational programs in the future.