HISTORY

The ECoTES Network was founded in 2014 during the Ibero-American Conference on Working Conditions and Health Surveys held in Buenos Aires, Argentina on the 13th and 14th of November 2014. It is currently composed of experts from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Spain, the United States, Honduras, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay. The network holds an annual meeting: Buenos Aires (Argentina) in 2014, Belo Horizonte (Brazil) in 2015, Lima (Peru) in 2016, San Jose (Costa Rica) in 2017, San Juan (Puerto Rico) in 2018 and Montevideo (Uruguay) in 2019.

MISSION AND OBJECTIVES

ECoTES’ mission is to help increase the quantity and quality of available information on working conditions, employment, and health in Latin America and the Caribbean that may be useful in promoting and facilitating activities and policies to improve these conditions. To fulfill its mission, ECoTES proposes the following objectives established in its foundational meeting:

• Provide information for the continuous improvement of Occupational Health Information Systems in Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Develop consensus-approved instruments for evaluating working and employment conditions, and their impact on workers’ health, and make said methods available for social actors.
• Promote the conduct of working and employment conditions surveys (WECS) and the use of comparable instruments and methodologies in Latin American and the Caribbean.