Maritime Health Research and Education-NET/Draft Letter to the Dean of the Maritime University

The Maritime Health Research and Education-NET (MAR-NET) is a non-profit network of students and researchers to collaborate with the aim to provide a foundation for an enhanced evidence base for the identification of health risks and gains related to occupation and employment to foster safe and healthy preventive strategies and policies. We will follow and support the young people from the maritime schools in their carrier. The method is that we ask the classes of maritime students to fill out a short questionnaire about their health and wellbeing in the beginning of their studies. When they start their practice periods at sea, they will answer the same questions to identify the environmental influence on their well-being on board. We measure how many of them leave the sea profession and we ask them to tell us how the profession can continue to be attractive to the young people. Later we ask them with some years intervals with the same questionnaires. We give the same questionnaires to the maritime students in other countries for comparison and to learn from their proposals on how to get the best working conditions.