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The rising costs of employee illness and injury at winter resorts in Canada has prompted an applied research study by Dr. Delia Roberts, FACSM of Selkirk College, Castlegar, British Columbia. The goal is to establish a worker safety program through a combination of fitness and nutrition.

Her research to date, both in winter sports and other industries, suggests that employee safety can be greatly enhanced through such measures. Dr. Roberts’ previous work has included highly successful injury prevention programs for a number of industries, including Weyerhaeuser Company, Canadian Mountain Holidays, Alpine Helicopter and the Calgary Heath Region.

For her current project, Roberts received a two-year operating grant through WorkSafeBC’s Focus on Tomorrow research program.

“My approach is to first assess the physiological and psychological demands placed on workers during the course of performing their daily tasks, and then to identify areas of deficit in the workers’ movement and stress management strategies,” Dr. Roberts says. “One can then provide specific solutions which not only decrease injury and illness rates, but which also have the added benefit of increasing performance. Because the solutions are specific to the problem and the population, they are both effective and culturally acceptable.”

During the 2010-11 season, Roberts and her team visited ski areas in Western Canada where they tested 75 patrollers, instructors and lift operators. They are now analyzing the data and preparing a pilot program that will be delivered to employees at five test areas this fall.

The preliminary findings were presented at the Canada West Ski Area Association’s Spring Conference, and generated enough interest that the programs have been endorsed by the Mountain Division of the Canadian Ski Patrol System and the Canadian Ski Instructors Association.

The final version of the program will be posted on Roberts’ website in the fall of 2012. In the meantime, SAM will present the findings to date in upcoming issues. To get an idea of what will be coming, check out her program for tree planters, whose workload is comparable to that of many resort employees, at www.selkirk.ca/treeplanting.

As with her work in tree planting and other industries, the resort program will include nutrition and hydration guidelines and a pre-season training program aimed at increasing aerobic conditioning, strengthening muscles and tendons to protect against wear and tear, and speeding up reflexes to protect joints. In working with tree planters in B.C., this program reduced injuries and illness by 40 percent. In early August, Weyerhaeuser said it had achieved a zero recordable-injury season for the first time in Canadian timberlands history, and credited Roberts’ Fit to Plant program.


Roberts encourages interested areas to contact her with comments about what would be useful to the industry. “The more I can tailor the program to the needs of the ski areas, the better,” she says. She can be contacted via e-mail at droberts@selkirk.ca.