Occupational Safety and Health Educational and Research Centers

Details

• Personal Author:
  Balmes J
• Description:
  The Northern California Education and Research Center (ERC) is part of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH), a consortium of programs at three campuses of the University of California - UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and UC Davis-- with institutionally committed funding to provide training, research, and outreach to protect the health of workers and communities. We promote healthy workplaces and environments that protect workers and communities from health hazards through teaching, research, and service. We serve government, industry, schools, health professionals, and the public through programs and partnerships designed to deepen the understanding of occupational and environmental hazards, and to prevent disease and injuries by: 1) Educating health professionals to be practitioner leaders in occupational and environmental health and safety. 2) Developing new knowledge through an interdisciplinary research agenda focused on bridging knowledge gaps critical to preventing illness and injury and promoting health. 3) Responding to the needs of people affected by hazards in their workplaces or communities, with special attention to vulnerable populations and through commitment to diversity in faculty, staff, and trainees. We have six core-academic and one research training program that provide intensive mentorship for trainees pursuing practice and research-based careers in: 1) Occupational and Environmental Medicine; 2) Occupational and Environmental Health Nursing; 3) Agricultural Safety and Health; 4) Ergonomics; 5) Industrial Hygiene; and 6) Occupational Epidemiology. To address the needs of the larger occupational health and safety community, our Continuing Education & Labor Occupational Health Programs provide trainings to promote best practices, share the latest research, and facilitate research to practice initiatives, providing key connections among academics, researchers, students, workers, labor organization groups, and employers. Over the course of this five-year grant, our ERC addressed many high priority occupational health issues such as ladder safety, robotics in agriculture, exoskeletons, wildland firefighter smoke exposure, and suicide. Our ERC has close to 97 faculty (35 core & 62 affiliated) that mentored 162 students (115 ERC Trainees) through Masters(N=68), PhD(N=85), and Medical Resident (N=26) programs. Our faculty and students contributed more than 400 manuscripts and book chapters to the literature and hundreds more presentations at national and international conferences. Further, our work has contributed to numerous Cal/OSHA Standards aimed at protecting the health of workers. Our Continuing Education and Outreach Programs hosted more than 280 courses serving 13,665 learners with more than 61,619 total person-hours of training. Additionally, industry specific trainings were provided to more than 1,500 individuals per year in construction, healthcare, retail, schools, nail salons, hotels, janitorial, hotel and hospitality, domestic work, childcare centers, construction, recycling and food processing industries. Our ERC responded comprehensively to the COVID-19 pandemic by helping to manage the surge at Call Centers, developing response algorithms, performing contact tracings, and developing community education tools to encourage proper PPE. Our research addressed multiple topics such as farm and grocery worker vulnerability, aerosol dynamics within elevators, and exposure among wildland firefighters. Collaboratively, we provided trainings to more than 2,000 workers and organizations with essential workers. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Agriculture Communicable Diseases Ergonomics Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Agricultural Safety COVID-19 Education And Research Centers ERCs Exoskeletons Industrial Hygiene Programs Occupational Health Nursing Occupational Medicine Programs
• Series:
  Grant Final Reports
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Final Grant Report
• Place as Subject:
  California ; OSHA Region 9
• 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:
  1-62
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20063016
• 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, T42-OH-008429, 2020 Sep; :1-62
• Email:
  jbalmes@berkeley.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2020
• Performing Organization:
  University of California, Berkley
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• End Date:
  20250630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:2f5e6d4e7562407a3d18f67a17878138c23d9245ba783fe1d29539e999a353775a1148870a8577c994e50d295d376387db333d2006d59470c7d63adccdda4af1
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/219062/cdc_219062_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.46 MB ]