The Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health, Final Progress Report, July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2020

Details

• Personal Author:
  Gimeno Ruiz de Porras D
• Description:
  The Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (SWCOEH) is the NIOSH Education and Research Center (ERC) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health (SPH). The UTHealth SPH has a unique, multi-campus system, with the main campus located in the Texas Medical Center in Houston and five other campuses in Austin, Brownsville, Dallas, El Paso, and San Antonio. All campuses are linked electronically, facilitating quality teaching and research, expanded course offerings, interdisciplinary collaboration and access to regional stakeholders, as well as expanding our reach to minority student populations. The SWCOEH's mission is to promote health, safety and well-being of workers and the community with a focus on Public Health Region 6 (PHR6: Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas), which concentrates high-risk industries like agriculture, construction, and petrochemical. Our activities are critical to developing and maintaining the high-quality research and training infrastructure crucial to prevent workers' fatalities, injuries and illnesses in PHR6. Continuously funded since it was established in 1977, the overall goal is to respond to the critical need for well-trained occupational and environmental health specialists by providing graduate-level academic training and outreach and continuing education programs in the occupational health disciplines with an underlying foundation of a state-of-the-art research program. Further, as an affiliate member of the NIOSH Total Worker Health® program, the SWCOEH embraces the Total Worker Health (TWH) paradigm, shifting beyond the traditional prevention of workplace illness, injury or health promotion. The SWCOEH provides master level training in Industrial Hygiene (IH), doctoral level training in IH, Occupational Epidemiology (OE), and Total Worker Health (THW), and postdoctoral residencies in Occupational Medicine (OM). In addition to the academic degree programs, the SWCOEH has active Outreach and Continuing Education (CE) Programs that provide a full spectrum of training opportunities, enhanced by an annual Pilot Projects Research Training Program (PPRTP) for new and transitional investigators. During the project period 2015-2020, we have had 44 NIOSH funded trainees: 18 in IH, 11 in OE, 14 in OM, and one in TWH program, the first NIOSH-funded ERC doctoral program in TWH in the U.S., and which just began recruiting students in fall 2019. Additionally, the SWCOEH trained students with other funding sources: 27 in IH, 3 in OM, 1 in OE and 1 in the Occupational Injury Prevention (OIP), which we discontinued in 2015, bringing the total number of trainees to 76. Of these, the programs have graduated a total of 53 students, 30 of whom were NIOSH funded: 17 in IH, 4 in OE, 8 in OM, and 1 formerly funded in OIP. Further, since 2016, we have had four trainees in a newly created Complementary OM Pathway, securing external funding other than NIOSH. In addition to the academic graduate degree programs, the SWCOEH CE Program trained 4,081 people in 160 educational events, representing 19,902 person-hours. In total, the PPRTP has awarded $346,096 to 31 new and transitional investigators in PHR6. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Epidemiology Occupational Health Safety Staff Development
• Keywords:
  Education And Research Centers Environmental Health ERCs Occupational Health Programs Occupational Medicine Occupational Safety 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:
  OSHA Region 6 ; Texas
• 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:
  1-127
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20064799
• 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-008421, 2020 Sep; :1-127
• Contact Point Address:
  David Gimeno Ruiz de Porras, PhD, Director, Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environmental Sciences, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health, San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas 78229
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2020
• Performing Organization:
  University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston
• 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-512:97037be691a10a7406b127c0fcf827fcecf4c79842071612be77d21168eb9354f65408a6b2375dcda350a38260aef048c9ee2c27f6fdb226058500bd37bd8d52
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/219106/cdc_219106_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.35 MB ]