142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

Annual Meeting Recordings are now available for purchase

304705
Occupational Health Internship Program (OHIP): Eleven years on – still shaping the future of OHS

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Tuesday, November 18, 2014 : 2:30 PM - 4:00 PM

Sarah Jacobs, MPH , Labor Occupational Safety & Health Program (LOSH), University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Ventura, CA
Matt London, MS , Health and Safety Department, NYS PEF, Albany, NY
Robert Harrison, MD, MPH , Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, University of Califiornia, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
Katherine Kirkland, DrPH, MPH , Association of Occupational & Environmental Clinics, Washington, DC
Ingrid A. Denis, MA , Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics, Washington, DC
Linda Delp, PhD, MPH , Labor Occupational Safety & Health Program, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
Regemralph Corpuz , Fielding School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management ; Luskin School of Public Affairs, Department of Public Policy, University of California, Los Angeles, Van Nuys, CA
Karen Calderon , Political Science, SDSU, San Diego, CA
Jeffrey Vredenburg , Geographical and Sustainability Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
Laura Campbell , University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL
A. Carli Richie-Zavaleta, MASP, MAIPS , Community Health and Prevention, School of Public Health at Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Workers continue to face many health and safety (H&S) problems, yet the current workforce is aging and the number of new professionals entering the field is diminishing. The Occupational Health Internship Program (OHIP) is actively working to ensure that there is an infusion of young, mult-ethnic activists entering our field. More than half of working OHIP alumni have remained in OHS or a related field and are making an impact through their research, teaching, and patient care. Others have gone into other professions positively influenced by their OHIP experiences.

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 programs
Occupational 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

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

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.