Occupational Safety and Health Training Project

Details

• Personal Author:
  Sommerich CM
• Description:
  Our Occupational Safety and Health Training program is designed to satisfy the Master of Science degree program requirements of the Graduate Program of Ohio State University's Integrated Systems Engineering Department, while meeting the needs of engineers and others who wish to work, do research, or pursue further education in occupational safety and ergonomics. The program includes required courses in occupational biomechanics, cognitive engineering, occupational health, industrial accident prevention and control, human error and systems failure, statistics and experimental design, a research practicum, an applied practicum in safety &/or ergonomics, and choice in electives, including epidemiology, safety in construction and civil engineering, risk assessment, and reliability. The specific MS program supported through the training grant funds began in 2006, and has been operating for 5 years. The program supported by this training grant has graduated six students, with two more poised to graduate in 2012. One new student joined this fall (2011). The program has an excellent track record with respect to attracting people from groups that are traditionally underrepresented in occupational safety, that is women and individuals from ethnic minorities. The program has a good track record of placement of graduates. For example, one is working for the Navy in a civil service position, as a Human Systems Engineer; another is working for a home health care agency where she was hired based on the innovative work she did for them while performing her safety practicum which was focused on identifying new interventions that could reduce the exposure of the home health aids to patient handling activities that involved heavy-to-obese patients. Still another student is continuing on in our graduate program, pursuing a PhD. The program's impact on workers comes not only through the work of our graduates, but directly through the safety practicum that each student performs, and indirectly or longer term through the students' thesis research or culminating project. Safety practicums undertaken by our students have included an assignment with the ergonomics and safety group at Honda of America Manufacturing in Marysville OH, the aforementioned project to reduce patient handling-related loads and injuries that occur to home health aids (Interim Health Care), a project that examined the patient handling activities in a medical ICU and involved the staff in prioritizing intervention acquisition (OSU Medical Center), involvement in one area of an R01 research project in which the student developed a prototype to reduce the duration of transducer manipulation and holding while obtaining an ultrasound exam (R01OH009253), and a project to examine patterns in the injury and illness records of members of the Ohio Farmers Union, to serve as a starting point for identifying interventions to reduce or prevent those injuries (Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation). The NIOSH Training Project Grant has allowed us to expand the number of students we have been able to train over the last 5 years, to expand our programmatic offering beyond human factors and ergonomics, and to create a well-rounded, well-conceived program in safety and ergonomics that exposes students to faculty from several different departments and colleges at OSU, as well as numerous expert practitioners in and outside of the Central Ohio area. It has also afforded us the means to support the students' annual attendance at a professional conference (for example, the Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society). The program and the students are building a track record of research publications, including works presented at the IIE Research Conference in 2009, the ASB Annual Meeting in 2010, and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Meeting in 2010 and 2011. Two manuscripts have been accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals (both are in press), and another is under review. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Biomechanical Phenomena Education Ergonomics Occupational Health Safety Staff Development
• Keywords:
  Biomechanics Occupational Health Occupational Medicine Programs Training
• Series:
  Grant Final Reports
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Final Grant Report
• Place as Subject:
  Ohio ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  OEP - Office of Extramural Programs
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-12
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20058270
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB2022-100267
• Citation:
  Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, T01-OH-008847, 2011 Sep; :1-12
• Contact Point Address:
  Carolyn M. Sommerich, PhD, CPE, Project Director, Department of Integrated Systems Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210
• Email:
  Sommerich.1@osu.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2011
• Performing Organization:
  Ohio State University
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20060701
• Source Full Name:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• End Date:
  20260630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:2a6e0e2741381d2bc0f879f954c41b715829a4401e06e04e4f393f1b67b53a6b8be035d63bd80aa4d473c2b587ea645dbd121592296a3ddc75135b6760daa9a6
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/218942/cdc_218942_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 207.02 KB ]