The recipients of this year’s OHS Section Awards are listed below.  Join us in celebrating the achievements of the award recipients at the OHS Section Awards Luncheon, Oct. 28, 2008 at the 2008 APHA Annual Meeting in San Diego. Visit the OHS Section Web site, http://www.apha.org/membergroups/sections/aphasections/occupational/,  for more information.

Alice Hamilton Award:

David Kotelchuck, PhD

Now a professor emeritus, Dr. David Kotelchuck was a professor in the Urban Public Health Program of the Hunter College School of Health Sciences, City University of New York, from 1984 – 2006. He was a founding Co-Director of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at Hunter College in 1987, and later became its director. He has written numerous books, book chapters and scientific and policy articles. His research has addressed workers’ health issues including toxic exposures, public employee health and safety, and medical needlestick injuries.

Dave has a long record of labor, H&S, and environmental and public health activism. In 1972 he began his 25 years of service to Health/PAC. His ground-breaking 1973 article “Your Money or Your Life” exposed the Johns Mansville Company for its decades-long malfeasance. Dave became a leading voice of the new public/environmental/occupational health movements that emerged in the 1970s.

Dave has worked closely with unions including the UAW and the Professional Staff Congress of the AFT. He served as the Director of Occupational Safety and Health for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) from 1980 – 1984, and then served as an H&S consultant until 2004. He has been writing a column, Health on the Job, in the union’s newspaper for nearly 30 years. He has also served continuously on the NYCOSH Board since its establishment in 1980.

Dave has been a member of the APHA OHS Section since 1978, serving as Chair in 2003-2004, and a Nominations Committee member (2004-2005). He served on APHA’s Governing Council from 1990-1994, its Action Board from 1997- 2000, and then its Policy Committee from 2000-2002.

Now early in his retirement, Dave continues his lifetime record of service and progressive activism to build with others a just and healthy organization of human society.

Nominated by Craig Slatin, Joel Shufro, and Chuck Levenstein

Lorin Kerr Award (2):

Diane E. Bush, MPH

Diane has been a leader in the movement to advance protections for young workers in the area of health and safety. Her activism and organizational skills have help advance the resources available to professionals, parents and youth to elevate this issue in our field. Diane’s accomplishments include:

• Developed community-based interventions to prevent occupational injury among young employees. These include educational, enforcement and other policy level strategies. One of Diane’s recent undertakings has been to coordinate several “Youth Leadership Institutes” where young workers participate in week-long conferences to help them develop leadership skills to be involved in health and safety activism.
• Co-wrote and conducted research for one of the first reports characterizing the problem of young workers' health and safety. This report helped generate NIOSH funding as well as a California task force on this issue.
Established a statewide Resource Center on Young Workers' Health and Safety at LOHP.

Diane’s leadership in the area of young worker health and safety has made a tremendous impact on the advancement and recognition of this long neglected topic in health and safety. Her ability to reach out to target groups including professional and young workers themselves has created excitement and energy to continue to make major improvements in the years to come. 

Nominated by Peter Dooley, Robin Baker, Mary Miller, and Linda Delp

Tony Oppegard, JD

Tony Oppegard of Lexington, Kentucky is a compassionate ear, a steadfast voice, and an influential activist for workers' rights, especially their right to a safe workplace, free of discrimination for raising safety concerns.  He has been seeking justice on behalf of miners' families in eastern Kentucky for nearly 30 years.

A graduate of Antioch School of Law, Tony began his legal career in  Hazard, Kentucky at the Appalachian Research & Defense Fund.  He used the labor protections provided under OSHA, MSHA, NLRA, FLSA, the Civil Rights Act and State laws to insist on redress for miners, widows and other workers in the Appalachian region.

For his clients -- whether the coal miner threatened for complaining about unsafe conditions, or a widow whose true love was killed at work -- Tony is both legal advisor and personal advocate.  His knowledge, attention to detail, and persistence have led to favorable resolutions in at least 120 safety discrimination cases.

Tony established the Mine Safety Project in 1991 to focus almost exclusively on safety discrimination cases.  Later, he served as a senior advisor at MSHA (1998-2000) and then was appointed as the general counsel of Kentucky's newly created Mine Safety Board.  There, he prosecuted 117 cases against mine management.  Tony's successes didn't sit well with all of Kentucky's elite; he was dismissed from his job in May 2005, with no reason given.  Undeterred, Tony established a private law practice and continues to represent miners in discrimination and workers' compensation cases, and widows and children in wrongful death proceedings.  He not only represents them but encourages them to organize, protest and speak-out for change.  Tony is a" one-man army in representing eastern Kentuckian families affected by some of the most noted mining disasters in Appalachia. But to the Kentucky families he's represented, he's just 'Tony.'"¹

1.    Deanna Lee-Sherman, Harlan Daily Enterprise, Dec. 30, 2006.

Nominated by David Michaels, Celeste Monforton, and Carol Rice

Tony Mazzocchi Award:

Carmen Hacht

Carmen has been the Recording Secretary at Local 222 for eight years.   She worked at Tyson Foods, Inc. meatpacking plant (formerly IBP) in Dakota City, Nebraska for 20 years.  She was an active steward from the very beginning of her work at the plant.  In the mid-1980s, IBP workers were suffering from high rates of MSDs.  The Local Union and the International's S&H department filed an OSHA complaint, and IBP received one of the highest fines ever for failing to provide a safe and healthy workplace.  

Settlement of the citations led to the most successful ergonomic programs in meatpacking. IBP, the International Union and OSHA developed the Red Meat Guidelines based on the program. Carmen became an "ergonomic monitor," a line worker trained in ergonomics.  Her duties over the years were myriad and included job analysis, audits of workers on light duty jobs, advocacy for workers who were injured and needed to get through the medical system, monitoring the lines for "manning" and "overload,"  monitoring workers' training and knife skills, and essentially keeping the company's feet to the fire!

Carmen’s work at the Local Union includes overseeing the ergonomics program at the meatpacking plant.  She teaches new monitors all that their job will entail on the shop floor. Everyone who knows Carmen knows that the company is on notice that if there's a problem, Carmen will get it addressed.  The workers in the plant trust her.  Carmen can be proud of the contributions she has made over the years to improving the working conditions for thousands of workers. She is the face of local union activism on health and safety and ergonomics.

Nominated by Jackie Nowell and Dorothy Wigmore.

International Health and Safety Award:

Jaime Cota

Jaime Cota, a labor and political activist in Mexico for more than 30 years, is a founder and the director of Centro de Informacion para Trabajadoras y Trabajadores (CITTAC, Information Center for Working Women and Men), a labor rights non-governmental organization in Tijuana.  For more than two decades, CITTAC has been the outstanding pro-worker NGO in Tijuana, which has assisted, advocated for and defended working women and men in Tijuana in legal suits, union organizing campaigns, and health and safety initiatives.  Health and safety trainings, campaigns and technical assistance have been at the heart of CITTAC’s work, and CITTAC has played in critical role in coordinating numerous international efforts by U.S. unions and occupational health professionals to assist maquila workers in Tijuana.  CITTAC has made gender issues – an implacable defense of women’s rights – a key aspect of its work among Tijuana’s maquila workers, who are overwhelmingly female. 

Jaime has played an indispensable role in the development and implementation of CITTAC’s work.  He is a widely recognized leader of grassroots labor activism in Tijuana, and is one of the “stars” of the outstanding documentary “Maquilapolis,” which profiled worker and community struggles in Tijuana for safe and healthy neighborhoods and workplaces.  Jaime Cota is a shining example of a dedicated, courageous H&S and labor rights activist playing a leadership role in a city wracked by deep-seated political corruption, terrifying narco violence, and domination by Asian and U.S. transnational corporations. 

Nominated by Garrett Brown