Earlier this year we blogged about shortages predicted in the next generation of construction workers. One of our favorite events is happening this week – the Women in Trades Career Fair in Portland.  Sponsored by Oregon Tradeswomen, this fair gives girls and women the opportunity to explore new careers. And what a great time for all young people to imagine careers in the trades and construction.

On Thursday, O[yes] (Oregon Young Employee Safety) representatives taught workshops related to safety at work for middle school girls, to be followed tomorrow with high school students. Oregon Tradeswomen has dedicated sponsors and partners supporting the event and hosting lots of other exhibits and workshops – carpentry, welding, solar energy – you name it! On Saturday the fair is open to the public. It looks like the sun will be shining, so why not come on out and explore new career possibilities? Get more details about the fair.

At the end of April, Let’s Get Healthy! traveled to Washington, D.C., to represent the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at the USA Science & Engineering Festival. The festival was a grand showcase of the wonders of science, health, technology, and engineering. There were hundreds of exhibits (including a full size jet and a magic school bus!), and tens of thousands of members of the public visited the festival over the course of three days.

Let’s Get Healthy! was invited to be one of the NIH exhibitors at the festival in collaboration with the Health Sciences and Technology Academy (based out of West Virginia). This invite was quite an honor for us! Our 200 square foot booth packed a punch: attendees were able to take a computerized survey on cardiovascular disease risk as well as visit a body composition station to learn about their body mass index and body fat percentage. As at our other events, these stations allow members of the public to learn about their own health while also contributing their anonymous data for scientific research.

Hundreds of people stopped by our booth, with 760 of them participating in one or both of the health education and research stations. In addition, nearly 1000 people took a photo in front of our new cutout photo board—including the Let’s Get Healthy! Associate Director (Lisa Marriott) and Program Coordinator (Adam Lipus)! After the event, we sent the photo board to the NIH visitors’ center in Bethesda, MD, where it will fly our banner of health education and research on the east coast.

Submitted by Adam Lipus, Let’s Get Healthy! Program Coordinator

About Let’s Get Healthy! We are an interactive education and research exhibit based out of CROET. We seek to educate the public about health in a fun way while linking scientists, students, and communities together in collaborative health research. Attendees of our events can visit various stations to learn about their own health (e.g. diet, sleep quality, and body composition) while also contributing their anonymous data for scientific research. The program started in 2007 and has held three dozen events (with nearly 10,000 participants!) across Oregon as well as in Washington state, Kansas, and Washington, D.C.! To learn more, visit our website,  follow us on Facebook, or check out our video!

May 9, 2012: Today is Occupational Safety and Health Professional Day. The American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) established this day of appreciation in an effort to recognize and celebrate the efforts of the thousands of Safety, Health and Environmental Professionals.

Who is providing safety support and leadership in your organization? Today’s a great day to give them a “shout out!”

Dr. Steven Shea, the new Director of CROET, held a reception at OHSU’s Mac Hall cafeteria today, May 8, to meet faculty and staff at the Center in a casual setting. In the far right of the picture, Steve is talking with Dr. Mike Buck on his way around the room to meet each staff member. He also spoke to the assembled group, briefly describing his background, career and family as a way of introducing himself to the staff . After, CROET faculty and staff  gathered for a group photo with the new Director, below (Dr. Shea is in the front), although one lab was absent due to a worksite project, among those not in town. He will be meeting with many people around OHSU and Oregon in the coming weeks and months.

CROET group photo on May 8, 2012

Bicycle parking and repair services at OHSU. What does your organization provide?

Healthy eating, exercise, adequate sleep….do you feel like you are being bombarded by topics about health and wellness? Guess that’s because you are! The case has been made pretty clear that our workforce is aging and becoming less healthy. This impacts everything from productivity to healthcare and worker compensation costs.  What you should also know, if you have anything to do with a wellness program at your workplace or want to move ahead with one, is that there is a bundle of helpful tools and websites.

We have blogged quite a bit about the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center and its focus on integrating health protection with health prevention. If nothing else, this really encourages those who do traditional safety and health to share ideas and interventions with those in wellness, benefits and risk management. If this is your interest, make sure you visit the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) Total Worker Health website. You can also visit the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center website to learn about the Center’s mission and projects here in Oregon.

If you are in Oregon, you certainly want to become familiar with Wellness@Work. Employers of all sizes and types will find resources on this site to create lasting policies and learn from other Oregon employers who have successfully made wellness a priority. As a good start, use the Healthy Worksite Assessment Tool to assess wellness at your workplace and identify ways to move ahead.

Finally, make sure you learn about the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Healthy Worksite Program. This program is designed to assist employers in implementing proven strategies to reduce chronic disease rates. If you missed the April 22 webinar which describes this program and the National Healthy Worksite Cohorts, you can see the presentation now.

Healthy Team Healthy U at OHSU

It’s overwhelming, perhaps, but very exciting. We know we can’t afford not to jump on board! And we also know how much better we feel and do when we take care of ourselves. What positive things are happening in wellness at your workplace?

Resources:
CROETweb topic: Total Worker Health & Wellness
Wellness@Work
National Healthy Worksite Program
SAIF Corporation Wellness & Health Promotion

Forty-four Oregonians lost their lives on the job and in war this past year.

Many of us fill our days doing what we can to make workplaces safer. But the reality is, it hasn’t been enough. In our small state, forty-four people from all walks of life went to work and didn’t return home. As shared at today’s Workers Memorial Day Service in Salem, each name, each number, represents a real person, with a real story, with loved ones who miss them.

Today, let us re-dedicate ourselves to more. To reach zero and a nameless list. Share this message with your coworkers, your friends, your communities, and your families.

St. Charles employees check out Let’s Get Healthy! bright and early in the morning.

On January 30 – February 1, Let’s Get Healthy! traveled to Bend, Oregon, to kick off a one year study on sleep and health in employees at the St. Charles Medical Center. This study will examine how work schedule and sleep patterns may influence dietary habits, body composition, attention, and short-term memory among hospital employees. This event was our first trip to Bend and is part of an exciting new partnership between OHSU and St. Charles!

The kicker? In order to study the effects of sleep on workers, we had to experience sleep deprivation ourselves. We aimed to enroll participants in one fell swoop, where they could sign a consent form and complete our baseline health assessment in one sitting. Since our goal was to enroll hospital employees with a range of work schedules, we had to accommodate the 24/7 nature of a hospital workplace. We weren’t quite there 24/7, but seven members of Dr. Jackie Shannon’s research team—plus Allison McCormick, our collaborator at St. Charles—were at the hospital conference room from 4am – midnight one day and from 4am – 2pm the next day. Yep, that’s 30 hours over the course of two days. And that doesn’t include exhibit setup, volunteer training, and exhibit pack-up!

Despite the absurdity of 2:45am wake-up calls, the event was a success. We exceeded our enrollment goal of 200 participants, and we shared in group bonding that can only come from an extremely sleepy frontal lobe. Around hour 26 of the event, our programmer Stephano Cetola stared into the distance and said—tiredly, almost in a whisper, and to nobody in particular—“We are studying sleep deprivation in a very, very personal way.”

About Let’s Get Healthy! We are an interactive education and research exhibit based out of CROET. We seek to educate the public about health in a fun way while linking scientists, students, and communities together in collaborative health research. Attendees of our events can visit various interactive stations to learn about their own health (e.g. diet, sleep quality, blood chemistry, and body composition) while also contributing their anonymous data for scientific research. The program started in 2007 and has held over two dozen events (with over 7000 participants!) across Oregon as well as in Washington state, Kansas, and Washington, D.C.! To learn more, visit our website, follow us on Facebook, or check out our video! Look for Let’s Get Healthy! at the 2013 Oregon Governor’s Safety and Health Conference!

Dr. Orfeu Buxton of Harvard University spoke at CROET (OHSU) on “Causes and Consequences of Sleep Deficiency: Clinical and Workforce Impacts“ on Tuesday, April 17 (pictured below).

Orfeu Buxton 4-17-12 seminar

Dr. Buxton’s research, published last week in Science Translational Medicine, showed that adults with extended sleep disruption – such as occurs in shift work – could be at an increased risk of obesity and diabetes.

The picture below shows Dr. Buxton (right) speaking with Dr. Kerry Kuehl of the Oregon Healthy WorkForce Center at OHSU, during the Associated Press (Rick Bowmer on the left) interview of Orfeu about his sleep research .

Dr. Buxton’s research primarily focuses on 1) the causes of chronic sleep deficiency in the workplace, home, and society, and 2) the health consequences of chronic sleep deficiency, especially cardiometabolic outcomes, and the physiologic and social mechanisms by which these outcomes arise. Successful aging is a central focus of this work. Ongoing interdisciplinary human studies involve sleep loss, aging, and insomnia, as well as health disparities.

Click to learn more about Dr. Buxton.

Dr. Buxton spoke at the invitation of the Oregon Healthy WorkForce Center and CROET. The Oregon Healthy WorkForce Center, a NIOSH Center of Excellence, is a collaboration of Oregon Health & Science University, Portland State University, Kaiser Center for Sleep Research, and the University of Oregon.

Dr. Orfeu Buxton at CROET at OHSU

2012 video finalists

We have winners for the 2012 Save a Friend, Work Safe video contest sponsored by O[yes]! All 9 finalist videos and 2 honorable mentions were shown on the big screen of Northern Lights Theater in Salem on Saturday, April 14.

First Place winners Drew Corrigan & Mitch Keranen

And the winners are!

1st Place ($500)
Drew Corrigan & Mitch Keranen, Sisters High, The Importance of Ear Protection
2nd Place ($400)
Austin Coburn & Jonah Netland, Salem Academy, The Safety Police
3rd Place tie ($300)
Donald Sage & Carly Hamer, Springfield High, Better to be Safe Than Sorry
3rd Place tie ($300)
Michael Norris, Trent Bennett, Lauren Nollette, Nathan Reed, Mellanie Boeckel, Garrett Tolman & Kori Cox, St. Helens High,
Building Construction

Students from St. Helens High await the screening.

Students joined O[yes] members, contest sponsors, and families and teachers. What a treat to meet the students and hear their stories about the making of their videos. It is clear that a love of  film making was a key reason many of the students entered the contest. First place winner Drew Corrigan told the audience that his video was inspired by concerns he’s had about impacts to his hearing from noise exposure as a drummer. We were pleased to learn that Drew wears hearing protection when he practices his drums.

We share a big thanks to the contest sponsors giving O[yes] the opportunity to secure the venue, provide refreshments and give cash prizes to students with matching cash prizes to their schools. 2012 sponsors include: Oregon OSHA, SAIF Corporation, local chapters of the American Society of Safety Engineers, the Center for Research on Occupational and Environmental Toxicology (CROET), Liberty Northwest, Hoffman Construction, and the Greater Portland Construction Partnership. We also thank Northern Lights Theater.

So what now? The videos will be used by O[yes]  during presentations and workshops with Oregon students to continue to create conversation about staying safe at work. All of the videos are available on YouTube – check them out. And join us next year!

Resources:
Video contest press release (4/14/12)
Oregon Young Employee Safety (O[yes]) website
More photos on Facebook

You may be wondering why CROET’s June symposium is on Green Chemistry, Safer Alternatives and Work? Perhaps you could say that a discussion that was part of our 2009 symposium Oregon’s Workplace Health and Safety: Looking forward to 2020 led us here. Perhaps you were there and remember the motivating words of Dr. John Howard of NIOSH? You may recall that he spoke about NIOSH’s Total Worker Health initiative – funny thing that we had no idea then that the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center would later be selected as a NIOSH Total Worker Health Center of Excellence.

But back to Green Chemistry. One of the Cross Cutting Issues discussed during the day was Workplace safety and health implications of the transition to “green.” Key areas of concern identified during this 2009 discussion were: Perception of “green” and its effect on safety and health; Do we understand current safety testing and labeling of green products; Where are the data gaps; and, What are some of the problems and strategies for transitioning the public into using green products.

Karen Chase facilitates CROET "green" 2009 session.

A lot has happened since 2009 relating to green chemistry and safer alternatives. Sometimes, however, we still find that the workplace is left out of the conversation. We are eager to revisit some of the things discussed back in our September ’09 Symposium along with updated news and findings.  We are really happy to partner with Oregon Health Authority’s Public Health Division. And as with all of our symposia, we are thrilled to bring in great speakers with terrific knowledge of the topic. Won’t you join us?

Resources
View webinar from CROET’s symposium Looking Forward to 2020.
Visit Green Chemistry, Safer Alternatives and Work webpage and online registration.
See Green Construction subtopic on CROETweb.com.
Visit CROET’s Health & Safety symposia webpage.