NAOSH Week & the SWCOEH – Our Continuing Education Program

HOUSTON (May 3, 2022) – The Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (SWCOEH) at UTHealth Houston is celebrating North American Occupational Safety and Health Week (NAOSH Week), an annual observance held in the first full week of May to spread awareness about occupational safety and health and to bring in systems that ensure the safety and well-being of workers.

Today (Tuesday), we highlight the SWCOEH Continuing Education (CE) Program, which aims to serve as a training resource for professionals and decision-makers in the occupational and environmental health fields by delivering specialized courses in response to current training needs.

A longstanding highlight of the SWCOEH CE Program is the Industrial Hygiene (IH) Seminar Series, formerly known as the Greater Houston Industrial Hygiene Council (GHIHC).

“The IH Seminar Series includes a superb group of IH/Safety personnel that use the forum for CE and professional development in order to maintain CM points for Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH) and Certified Safety Professional (CSP) certifications,” said Jan Koehn, CE director for the local Gulf Coast Section of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA).

Learn more about the IH Seminar Series, with more insight from Koehn, as well as regular contributors Garlen Yeager and William “Bill” Young.

Following a similar format as the IH Seminar Series, another SCWOEH CE offering is the Occupational Medicine Journal Club. The Journal Club meetings, held on the third Thursday of the month, are an educational and networking opportunity to discuss and debate the results of recently published research in a peer reviewed journal.

“Journal Club is a great event in which researchers gather to criticize and discuss the evidence-based research of recent publications from peer-reviewed journals,” said Ghuwaya Alnuaimi, a PhD student in Public Health at UAE University. “I enjoyed the social atmosphere in the Journal Club that makes the discussion simple and easy.” 

Learn more about the Journal Club, including thoughts from regular attendees. Register now for the next meeting, set for May 19. The featured speaker is Rispba McCray-Garrison, MD, a NIOSH Occupational Medicine Resident, and the topic is “Spatial Changes in Work Capacity for Occupations Vulnerable to Heat Stress: Potential Regional Impacts from Global Climate Change.”

Learn more here about the SWCOEH and all that we offer, including our latest news.