For decades, the maritime industry assessed crew care primarily through an onboard lens. Safety management systems, personal protective equipment, compliance training, and emergency medical preparedness were rightly prioritised as core components of safety—and they remain essential today. However, a broader understanding is now reshaping how the industry defines and delivers crew health and wellbeing.
Increasingly, it is recognised that seafarer wellbeing does not begin the moment a crew member steps onboard. It starts at home. The physical and mental state of a seafarer, and their ability to perform safely and effectively at sea, is connected to the stability, health, and security of life at home.
What was once viewed as progressive, or even idealistic, is now becoming an industry standard. Shipping companies are acknowledging that a healthy, supported family environment plays a role in crew retention and resilience.
Beyond the Vessel
Seafarers do not operate in isolation from their personal lives. What happens at home does not pause when a crew member joins a vessel. Rather, it forms part of the wider context in which they work and can influence their health and wellbeing at sea.
Challenges such as family illness, financial uncertainty, or limited access to healthcare at home do not disappear when a seafarer joins a vessel. These pressures can travel with crew members, affecting concentration, decision making, and emotional resilience. As a result, more companies are viewing seafarer health and wellbeing through a holistic lens, and not solely as an onboard responsibility.
Key Findings
As a health insurance provider for seafarers and their families, Marine Benefits gains insight into seafarer health and wellbeing through claims data and preventative initiatives such as Re:fresh. This enables us to develop evidence‑based insights that support our clients in understanding health risks, trends, and wellbeing needs across their workforce.
Over time, analysis of claims data showed that many health issues affecting seafarers were linked to lifestyle‑related factors rather than isolated incidents. To better understand what was driving these patterns, Marine Benefits launched Re:fresh in 2015, a health and wellbeing study exploring physical, mental, and social factors. By combining claims data with direct input from seafarers, Re:fresh provides a stronger, evidence‑based understanding of the factors shaping seafarer health.
These insights remain highly relevant today. In 2025, the highest claims costs for seafarers were associated with skeletal, heart, and digestive conditions, while the most frequent medical visits related to skeletal issues, general consultations, and heart‑related illnesses — many of which are influenced by everyday health habits.
Re:fresh 2024 results
Findings from the Re:fresh 2024 report show some physical health factors that may be contributing to the most common health issues seen among seafarers. These include:
These factors are linked to long‑term health risks and closely reflect trends seen in claims data. This highlights the need to continue focusing on sleep, physical activity, and sustainable lifestyle choices, both onboard and at home.
Mental and social factors also play an important role in shaping overall health and wellbeing. Experiences onboard can influence stress levels, sleep quality, motivation, and everyday health behaviours, which in turn affect long‑term physical health. At the same time, pressures or support experienced at home can impact mental wellbeing at sea. This two‑way relationship highlights how closely physical health, mental wellbeing, and social conditions are connected, and why wellbeing must be understood — and addressed — as a whole.
Encouragingly, the Re:fresh 2024 results show a positive trend in mental wellbeing. Stronger social connections onboard, together with focused efforts to improve communication and support during and after the pandemic, appear to be contributing to improved mental health outcomes.
At the same time, the study provides deeper insight into psychosocial working conditions and onboard culture, showing how social environments continue to shape seafarers’ wellbeing. While progress is being made, certain workplace behaviours need improvement:
Taken together, the Re:fresh 2024 results and 2025 claims data highlight how physical, mental, and social aspects of health are connected in shaping seafarers’ wellbeing, both onboard and at home. This reinforces the importance of viewing health and wellbeing as an ongoing process, rather than something limited to time spent at sea.
Re:fresh 2026 is now open for registration
If your company would like to take part in the next Re:fresh survey, registration is now open to all companies. There is no requirement to be a Marine Benefits client. By participating, your organisation contributes to the overall industry report, helping to build a strong evidence base on seafarer health and wellbeing across the maritime industry.
Participating companies also receive a confidential, company‑specific report, benchmarked against industry results. Many organisations have taken part in Re:fresh over several years, enabling them to track trends over time, assess the impact of wellbeing initiatives already in place, and identify areas where further improvement is needed.
We strongly encourage broad participation. The more seafarers who take part, the more robust, representative, and valuable the insights become, not only for individual companies, but for the wider maritime industry.
Sign up here to take part in Re:fresh 2026
Download and read our previous reports here