Title: New Summer Intern Program Launched
Author:
Section/SPIG: Occupational Health and Safety
Issue Date:
Students Wanted for Summer 2004
Yet another new project has been born out of an initial conversation at the APHA annual meeting. Three years ago at the Boston meeting, a few people in the OSH section began to talk about creating a new union-based summer intern program, modeled on programs established in the late 1970s by the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) and the Montefiore Medical Center’s Department of Social Medicine in New York. We realized that many of us in the section originally came to the field of occupational health through the transformative experience of working with a local union on worksite hazards over a summer. For many, it was the perfect blending of science and politics with a focus on disease prevention. We got out of the classroom and laboratory, and learned about the “real world” of the workplace. Professional and personal friendships formed more than 25 years ago continue to this day.
At the same time, we realized that the OSH Section and our field were long overdue for an infusion of young health professionals dedicated to forming partnerships with unions and working people on occupational health and safety issues. It was time to create an updated summer intern program. The idea was to make it a truly national program this time, and to broaden recruitment beyond medical students to the full spectrum of disciplines related to occupational health and safety. We decided to include undergraduates to work in teams with graduate medical, nursing, and public health students. This could help increase the number of students eventually applying for graduate study in our field. We also anticipated greater participation among minority students if we included undergraduates, based on data from other union summer programs.
Over the next three years we held a series of meetings, corresponded by e-mail, and pursued funding leads. The result was the launch of OHIP, the Occupational Health Internship Program at the APHA meeting in San Francisco in November 2003. AOEC, the Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics (another project created by OSH section members), generously offered to house the project, with the help of its executive director, Katherine Kirkland. The pilot project for the summer of 2004 is funded through agreements with NIOSH and the California Department of Health Services.We expect to place approximately 12 student interns in a variety of workplace on both the East and West Coasts.
We Need Your Help
We need the help of the section members, particularly those teaching in higher education, to identify and refer students to us who are energetic, self-motivated, and interested in labor or social justice issues. Many of us signed up for the original 1970s summer intern program after hearing OCAW’s Tony Mazzocchi speak eloquently on our campuses about the realities of workplace safety and opportunity to make a difference. Now that Tony is no longer with us, it’s up to us to find and mentor the next generation of OSH activists.
We’re looking for students (medical, nursing, graduate or undergraduate) from any college or university willing to work about eight weeks this summer in either the New York Metropolitan Area or the San Francisco Bay Area. Stipends are available but are not intended to cover housing. David Kotelchuck at Hunter College will be coordinating the New York project; Bob Harrison at UC San Francisco will be coordinating the Bay Area students. Overall project coordinator is Gail Bateson, working with the Labor Occupational Health Program at UC Berkeley along with Mike Wilson.
Details about the program are available on our Web site: <www.aoec.org/OHIP>. A student application form will be posted by the end of January and due by the end of February. To talk to a real person about the specific worksite projects we’re lining up and other details, contact Gail Bateson in Berkeley, California at <batesong@pacbell.net> or (510) 525-6421.