Oral

Workers continue to face a myriad of health and safety(H&S) problems, yet the current H&S workforce is aging and the number of new professionals entering the field is diminishing. The Occupational Health Internship Program (OHIP) plays a vital role in shaping the future OHS field. Placing students in summer internships with unions and community-based organizations since 2004, graduates of OHIP are making an impact on OHS through their research, teaching and patient care. Working in pairs, students address specific H&S concerns raised by workers employed in underserved or high hazard jobs. The emphases are to give students the opportunity to interact directly with workers and observe them under actual working conditions; provide students an understanding of the complexity of the work environment and appreciation for H&S in relation to work; and demonstrate the importance and rewarding nature of OHS and provide useful information to workers. Over the past seven summers, 105 students have worked on 52 separate OHS projects. A panel of OHIP students will present their summer 2011 projects. Several of the proposed projects likely to be reported include: heat stress among forest workers and harvesters, hazards presented by multi-assaultive patients in a state psychiatric hospital, health and safety conditions among banquet and caterer service workers and chemical hazards faced by workers in hair salons. Presenters will describe how they involved workers in formulating their project, summarize their findings and recommendations and describe the health education product that they provided to their host union or community-based organization.

Session Objectives: Explain the goal of student-worker collaborative research to address workplace hazards. Describe how participatory research projects can help motivate public health students or students in a related discipline to enter the field of OHS. Describe the benefits of pairing students and workers who share a common language or culture to identify and address workplace hazards.

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH) , Masters Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES)