Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health

SWCOEH’s Dr. Rispba Garrison completes OEM rotation with International SOS

Rispba Garrison, MD, MS, MPH, a recent Occupational & Environmental Medicine Residency graduate of the Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, is the first SWCOEH OEM resident to complete a designed rotation course with International SOS (ISOS), a global health and security services firm that helps organizations and their people reduce exposure to and mitigate health, wellbeing and security risks. 

Dr. Garrison worked under the mentorship of Dr. Sumeet Batra, Corporate Medical Advisors Occupational Health Consultant. Dr. Salwan Hanoudi, MBChB, MPH, ISOS Regional Medical Director, facilitated her rotation schedule and tasks. Dr. Garrison performed clinical observership with Prime Occupational Health clinics in Texas and Louisiana to understand the clinical engagement of a typical occupational health clinical setting with various industries, mainly oil and gas, for the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

“My rotation at ISOS was a dream come true experience!” Dr. Garrison said. “It was the field of medicine that I always wanted to do. I learned how International SOS physicians set up medical locations in various countries, provide medical communication networks around the globe, and provide medical aid to their clients, which include large and small companies, colleges and universities, and organizations receiving medical assistance.”

“Her performance and engagement were amazing, and we were very pleased with having her with us,” said Dr. Hanoudi. “She did much networking with colleagues in the profession and showed a great interest in corporate occupational health and consulting.”

Dr. Garrison stated “I had the honor of helping develop an SOS Pandemic Response Plan, which the company would use globally. The pandemic response plan model provides simple step-by-step directions on pre-infection outbreak committees, training, communication strategies, monitoring systems, and additional preventative measures that need to be created and established. The Risk Assessment Tool we created assesses the conditions of company-specific personnel and their job duties, workplace/community infection epidemiological risk, and environmental risks.”

Dr. Hanoudi explained how the SWCOEH and ISOS partnership came about. “The thought to develop a joint effort program between the SWCOEH and International SOS came from Dr. Brett Perkison, the SWCOEH OEM Program Director. Dr. Perkison was looking for an attachment program that adds to the SWCOEH medical residents’ clinical rotations and introduces them to health consulting and international best practices of occupational medicine. This is due to the worldwide presence and footprint of ISOS as a global organization. We worked together to design the program curriculum and getting the necessary approvals for this rotation to be in place.”

Dr. Hanoudi offered an overview of what a SWCOEH OEM resident should expect from a rotation with ISOS.

“ISOS and Corporate Medical Advisors have developed a joint training program to be completed within 60 days. First, the curriculum, which aims to create an attachment with health and senior medical consultants across various countries in different specialties linked to health consulting and corporate medicine. This provides the training candidate the insight and feel of the mentioned practice and an understanding of work specifics and challenges. Second, a hands-on observership in clinical occupational health medicine directed to corporate clients. This provides the trainees the clinical time to observe best practices in occupational health medicine in a typical clinical environment within a clinical setting. The trainee will have to complete a genuine health consulting project through these 60 days as a third part of the training curriculum.”

“Future OEM residents can expect a friendly and welcoming environment,” Dr. Garrison said. “They will be able to visit and possibly work at the ISOS office in downtown Houston during their rotation. They will have the honor of working with Dr. Salwan and other ISOS physicians and learn more about the medical side of the company and will have to do a research project or design a project that will benefit the field of Occupational Medicine.”

The SWCOEH provides graduate-level training opportunities for occupational and environmental health professionals through our industrial hygiene, occupational and environmental medicine, occupational epidemiology, and Total Worker Health^®.