Title: CHAIR’S MESSAGE

Author:

Section/SPIG: Occupational Health and Safety

Issue Date:

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APHA needs new members!
So, before I begin, I’d like to request that all you readers please cut and paste the following paragraphs into an e-mail to non-member colleagues, especially those working in government. Feel free to modify, and please follow up after you send:

Why should occupational safety and health professionals join APHA?
APHA provides one of the few venues for true cross-disciplinary interaction, with working groups of occupational health nurses and industrial hygienists enriching the section, along with the active participation of physicians, public health specialists, health educators, social scientists, academicians, public health practitioners, students, union activists and others. It also enables us to connect to the larger world of public health and, through the active development of organizational policy, places the resources of its 50,000 members in the service of occupational health and safety. During this past year, APHA’s executive director, Dr. Georges Benjamin, has written to support the Washington State ergonomics standard, lobbied to include worker protection in the smallpox vaccination program, invoked the APHA policy supporting OSHA’s proposed TB rule, and co-sponsored (with NIOSH) the National Occupational Research Agenda's June Symposium. We need better integration to encourage APHA to focus on OHS budgets to the same extent they do CDC’s and to continue to integrate OHS into public health, but we need more members to accomplish that.

How to join?
Here is the Web site to join: <www.apha.org/membership/>.
Here is the section Web page, which includes information on joining the occupational health list serve (bottom of page): <http://depts.washington.edu/oshalert/>.
Thanks!

Now, on to the news and preparations for San Francisco!
Laura Boyle describes the NORA Symposium later in this newsletter, but I would like to emphasize what a terrific meeting it was. The National Occupational Research Agenda itself is in it’s seventh year now, and has been a remarkable effort led by NIOSH to engage stakeholders from labor, industry, academia and government to take a comprehensive look at research needs, in order to target and prioritize. The wonderful thing about it was that a government agency seriously engaged its public and changed its focus on that basis. Significant results included an entirely new focus on applied research, such as intervention effectiveness and prevention of traumatic injuries. Complex areas such as mixed exposures and special populations at risk were included in the 21 priority areas. NIOSH then engaged implementation teams that included stakeholders to work to further the agenda. It has also followed up by re-directing existing resources, both intramural and extramural, to target these areas, and used the framework to obtain additional funding and to help guide joint efforts with various NIH centers. This year’s Symposium marks the first time the meeting was held as an open scientific session, and it produced a wonderful series of papers and posters on topics that matter to section members.

At the same time OSHA, while beset by more problems than we have space for here, has done some truly innovative and important work in its Hispanic Task Force. Region V has paved the way (soon to be followed by other Regions) in accepting NGO facilitation of complaints from immigrant workers who would be unlikely to forward complaints themselves.

NORA-fueled research may be one of the reasons why the scientific sessions for this year’s APHA meetings will be so rich. As Celeste Monforton describes in this newsletter, the quality and number of submissions were extremely high, inspiring a new approach to presentations. For example, Monday night there will be an entire session on Occupational Health Services Research, a field that did not exist a few years ago, and is rapidly developing thanks to specific NORA targeting. Celeste has done an incredible job this year, and has agreed to work on next year’s meeting in DC as well, but is looking for a volunteer to replace her after that. This is a great way for new members, particularly those from academia, to get engaged in the section, and anyone interested in working on this committee is more than welcome.

My heartfelt thanks to Celeste and to Mary Miller, our “webmeister,” Karla Armenti, our newsletter editor, John Morawitz, nomination chair, Darius Sivin, events chair, Andrea Kidd Taylor, chair of the scholarship committee, and Jim Cone, policy guru, and all who have been the soul and sinew of OHS. ALL welcome additional help – please look for them in San Francisco, or contact them earlier by e-mail, <http://depts.washington.edu/oshalert/leadership.htm>.

Our business meeting will start on Sunday morning at 8:30, and we hope to see many new faces there. We are starting to flesh out the agenda for the different business sessions, please send suggestions; we will distribute and post so you won’t miss a thing. Included in the schedule will be at least one discussion of the strategic planning process as described by Craig Slatin in this newsletter. Dave Kotelchuck has been a wonderful chair-elect, has been leading intersectional work along with outreach, and hits the ground running in this issue of the newsletter. So please make him happy by writing on your “to-do” list for next week a follow up call to the people you just e-mailed.

I look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!