4059.0 Pathways into OHS Careers and Activism

Tuesday, November 1, 2011: 8:30 AM
Roundtable
A surge of workplace health and safety professionals entered the OHS field in the 1970s. Since then, many changes have occurred—jobs have shifted toward the service sector, the American workforce has become more diverse and the number of new OHS professionals has slowed to a trickle. More than ever, it has become clear that there is a need for new health and safety professionals. Since 2004, the Occupational Health Internship Program (OHIP) has been committed to mentoring a new generation of OHS professionals by placing students with unions or worker groups to investigate workplace health concerns. OHIP was modeled after a union-based internship program organized by Tony Mazzocchi in the 1970s with OCAW and the Montefiore Medical Center's Department of Social Medicine in New York. Many of our OHS leaders today started their careers with this original internship and several are founders of OHIP. OHIP has successfully responded to workforce changes by training interns with different academic and technical knowledge, social and language skills and by recruiting students from diverse backgrounds. This presentation will examine the success of OHIP over the past eight years in influencing students' career paths into OHS. It will highlight findings from a 2010 survey of OHIP alumni regarding their experiences. The authors will follow-up with former interns to determine how OHIP shaped their careers. Finally, the presentation will consider the role OHIP plays in sparking interest in OHS issues among a new generation of professionals and providing a career pathway into the field.
Session Objectives: Upon completion of this session, participants will be able to: Explain how a student-worker collaborative research Program can serve as a gateway to careers in OHS Describe the benefits of recruiting students with different technical, social and language skills to address workplace issues with a diverse American workforce Assess the need to create a new generation of OHS professionals given the reality of our current OHS workforce
Moderator:
Kevin Riley, PhD MPH

Table 1
Broadening the constitutency for OHS; it must be done, but how?
Beth Rosenberg, ScD MPH, Michael B. Lax, MD MPH and Craig Slatin, ScD, MPH
Table 2
Setting an Agenda for Advancing Young Worker Safety
Carol Runyan, PhD, John Lewko, PhD and Kimberly J. Rauscher, ScD, MA
  
Table 3
Pathways into OHS Careers: The Occupational Health Internship Program
Sarah Jacobs, MPH, Kevin Riley, PhD MPH, Gail Bateson, MS, Robert Harrison, MD, Linda Delp, PhD, MPH, Diane Bush, MPH, Katherine Kirkland, DrPH, MPH and Ingrid A. Denis, MA
Table 4
Creating a New Generation of OHS Professionals
Kevin Riley, MPH PhD, Sarah Jacobs, MPH and Homero Harari, MSc
Table 5
Promotion of Adult Film Industry performer safety by the UCLA Reproductive Health Interest Group
Adam Cohen, MPH, Mark McGrath, MPH, Rebecca Butler, AB and Paula Tavrow, PhD
  

See individual abstracts for presenting author's disclosure statement and author's information.

Organized by: Occupational Health and Safety

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH)

See more of: Occupational Health and Safety
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