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Occupational Health Internship Program (OHIP): Eleven years on – still shaping the future of OHS
Since 2004, pairs of interns with diverse technical, language, and cultural skills are placed with a host union or community group each summer. Interns include undergraduate and graduate students, only some of whom are in H&S-related academic programs. Teams investigate H&S concerns of workers, often of new immigrant groups, employed in underserved or high hazard jobs at one of OHIP's training sites. Interns interact directly with workers and organization leaders, observe working conditions, and provide a “give-back” product that helps address H&S issues.
A panel of OHIP interns will present their 2014 projects. Last year's presentations included: assessment of workplace H&S issues of Paleteros, examination of injured workers returning to work and opioid dependency, investigation of ergonomic injury prevention interventions for hotel housekeepers, and investigation of workplace violence prevention in healthcare.
Presenters will describe how they involved workers in formulating their project, summarize their findings and recommendations, and describe the health education product that they provided to their host organization.
Learning Areas:
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programsOccupational health and safety
Public health or related education
Public health or related research
Learning Objectives:
Explain the goal of student-worker collaborative field-based experience to address workplace issues.
Describe how participatory research projects can help motivate public health students or students in a related discipline to enter the OHS field.
Describe the benefits of pairing students and workers who share a common language or culture to identify and address workplace issues.
Keyword(s): Occupational Health and Safety, College Students
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the National OHIP Coordinator where I manage overall OHIP operations.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.