Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #113153

Laurie Kominski, MSW, Associate Director of Program Administration, UCLA Labor Occupational Safety & Health (LOSH) Program, Hershey Hall, P.O. Box 951478, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1478, 310 794 5992, lauriek@ucla.edu and Laura Podolsky, Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program, UCLA School of Public Health, Hershey Hall, PO Box 951478, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1478.

California has an exciting opportunity to serve as a national leader in worker protection and injury and illness prevention. Workers' Compensation reform legislation passed in 2002 included a provision to create a fund to establish a Worker Health and Safety Training and Education Program (WOSHTEP). Financed by an annual assessment on insurers paid out indemnity claims, it is administered by the State's Commission on Health and Safety and Workers' Compensation (CHSWC). WOSHTEP is designed to train frontline Worker Occupational Safety and Health (WOSH) Specialists in high hazard industries to take leadership roles in promoting health and safety back in their workplaces. Also established under the legislation is a labor-management Advisory Board. Since July 2003, CHSWC has contracted with the UCLA Labor Occupational Safety and Health (LOSH) Program and the Labor Occupational Health Program (LOHP), UC Berkeley, to conduct needs assessments, develop and implement a 24-hour curriculum in English and Spanish, compile a Multilingual Health and Safety Resources Guide, develop resource center libraries that provide information and technical assistance to support trained WOSH Specialists and WOSHTEP trainers, develop a small business alternative training model, and design a training-of-trainers course and apprenticeship to initiate a statewide network of trainers that includes community colleges and other organizations. This poster will describe and analyze the aforementioned program components including a preliminary evaluation of its impact -- successes and obstacles encountered -- with diverse worker populations in a variety of workforce settings.

Learning Objectives: Employers, labor, educators, insurers, governmental agencies, and community-based organizations will be able to

• identify 5 key steps for establishing and maintaining a statewide injury and illness prevention training program for front line workers and their representatives,
• understand 3 benefits of establishing a Statewide Labor-Management Advisory Board to guide the program, and
• describe at least 2 strategies for creating a Statewide Network of training providers who can reach occupational groups with special needs, such as those who do not speak English as their first language, workers with limited literacy, young workers and other traditionally underserved industries or groups of workers.

Keywords: Workplace Safety, Training

Related Web page: www.losh.ucla.edu/woshtep/index.html

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.