The Biological Monitoring Component Program (BIOM) is an area of specialization within the Environmental and Occupational Hygiene M.S. and Ph.D. programs in the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Environmental Health. BIOM not only prepares its graduates with the tools that they need to be prepared to begin their careers in industry, labor and government, but builds a talent pool of individuals who have the knowledge base to develop, implement and evaluate biological monitoring programs. All program graduates are equipped to conduct research and evaluate data. This program also solidifies the transferable skills needed so that our graduates are able increasingly take on program responsibilities. Students with a BIOM concentration are required to complete a thesis in the area of biological monitoring and/or molecular epidemiology.

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The Continuing Education (CE) Program is based in the Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences at the University of Cincinnati. The major purpose of the continuing education component of the ERC is to develop and present a multi-disciplinary program of courses in the fields of occupational health, industrial hygiene, safety, and nursing.

These courses are offered to enhance the education and expand the knowledge and skills of practicing professionals. This purpose is accomplished through objectives including the following:

• provide formalized training in occupational safety and health at different levels;
• meet the educational needs of practicing professionals through regional needs assessment;
• serve as a resource to the community through awareness presentations; and
• provide services to occupational health professionals.

The CE Program features:

• experienced faculty with 30 trainers having expertise from 20 different occupational safety and health disciplines;
• diverse course offerings with over 100 unique courses with over 1000 individuals trained annually;
• collaborations with numerous external partners to provide experiential and customized training; and
• access to state of the art teaching technologies.

Participants in our CE courses come from a variety of occupational and environmental health settings including government, labor organizations, and industry. The backgrounds of the participants vary and include those just beginning to work in a safety or health field, with experience and needing a refresher course in basic material, and professionals keeping abreast of current advanced developments. The CE Program is also the lead member of the Great Lakes OSHA Education Center and collaborates to offer many occupational safety courses.

Courses

• Ethics in Occupational Safety and Health Series
• Great Lakes OSHA Course Catalog
• Dr. Roy McKay Respiratory Protection Courses
• Online NIOSH-approved Spirometry Refresher Training
• Online Fundamentals of Spirometry Training
• Upcoming Ergonomics and Industrial Hygiene Webinar Series
• Recorded Ergonomics and Industrial Hygiene Webinars
• Evaluating Firefighters’ Hyperthermia Level with a CNT Based Cooling System During Live Burn Firefighting (webinar)
• Violence in the Healthcare Workplace
• For more CE videos and ERC content, visit the UC ERC YouTube playlist. 

Other Resources
2024 February Respirator Newsletter by Dr McKay

NIOSH Science Blog featuring ERC CE collaborative webinar series

Join our CERKL groups

Keep updated with the University of Cincinnati's Education and Research Center and corresponding programs.

Join one or more of our CERKL groups by click on the links below. CERKL is a social media mechanism that allows our programs to disseminate information to our stakeholders: current faculty and students, alumni, researchers, and members of industry in the region. CERKL is similar to Linked-In but is more specific to academic and training programs. CERKL has a structure where all members belong to an ERC group (Parent group) as well as a program specific group (e.g. EIH, OHN, OMR, and OSHE) (Sibling group). Examples of the information that will be sent out to the members include seminar announcements, information about the latest results from the targeted research training program, discipline-specific job announcements; summary of thesis, dissertations, practica, and capstones, recent awards, and summaries of recent publications. One of the key components of CERKL is the ability to request assistance from the members, such as need for expertise or mentor, assistance in job placement in certain parts of the country, and input back to the program. CERKL is not utilized to solicit funding or donations from alumni and stakeholders. 

Parent group: Get updates on center wide activities 
https://cerkl.com/UC-ERC

Environmental and Industrial Hygiene (Including Occupational Ergonomics and Biomonitoring): Get updates about EIH, OSE, and BIOM activities
https://cerkl.com/IHUC

Occupational Health Nursing: Get updates about OHN activities
https://cerkl.com/UC-OHN

Occupational-Health-Nursing Occupational Safety Health Engineering: Get updates about OSHE activities
https://cerkl.com/UC-Occupational-Safety-Health-Engineering

Occupational Medicine Residency: Get updates about OMR activities
https://cerkl.com/UC-Occupational-Medical-Residency

Health and Safety Training Videos

Trainees and faculty have developed videos to address health and safety concerns for firefighters and home healthcare workers. These short videos provide recommendations and best practices to many of the potential risk factors in these two professions.

Firefighter Videos 

Home Healthcare Worker Videos

Engagement with Local and Regional Stakeholders

The ERC faculty members complete extensive outreach activities which are tracked. We are constantly working with stakeholders and partners to make real impact on the health and safety of the worker in a wide variety of industries and agencies. Please contact Kermit Davis (Kermit.davis@uc.edu) if you would like to talk about potential projects, consultations and opportunities to work with the faculty of the ERC.

Historic Workplace and Environmental Health and Safety Videos

Dr. Eula Bingham Benzene ETS Press Conference  - April 29, 1977

Historic Film YouTube Channel

Industrial hygiene activities involve the anticipation, recognition, evaluation and control of workplace hazards. The profession is devoted to assuring that everyone leaves the workplace in the same state of health as he or she arrived at work. This is a large task, and requires broad academic education and life-long learning to understand emerging exposures and new tools to evaluate and control exposures.

The University of Cincinnati Education and Research Center program in Industrial Hygiene is in the Environmental & Industrial Hygiene Division, Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences at the College of Medicine.

Two areas of study are available: Industrial Hygiene (IH), Occupational Ergonomics (OE). The CP program is accredited by ABET at the MS level and prepares graduates to anticipate and evaluate workplace hazards, and to assure the development of controls to reduce and eliminate hazards. The OSE program prepares graduates to develop comprehensive solutions to improve worker health by understanding ergonomic/safety concerns and physiological responses to physical and/or environmental risk factors in the workplace. Graduates are trained in the use of quantitative tools for characterizing and preventing ergonomic/safety risk factors in the workplace. Doctoral students in the CP or the OSE program complete advanced course work, conduct original research and defend the dissertation research.

The academic program blends classroom and work in the field, providing experiences to enable graduates to:

1. Demonstrate a high level of technical and scientific competence in the anticipation, recognition, evaluation and control of occupational and environmental exposures, including the design and development of long-range goals and programs. This may include participation in global professional activities.
2. Solve real-world problems by combining observation, evaluation of the literature, measurement and other data collection and analysis of data.
3. Communicate effectively regarding potential hazards, risk reduction approaches and required actions within the health and safety team, with varying levels of organizational management and other affected stake-holders.
4. Apply the professional code of ethics in all aspects of their practice.
5. Demonstrate an appreciation for the limits of their graduate education and experience by participating in the continuous process of professional development, including continuing education and professional certification.
6. Industrial Hygiene students participate in multi-disciplinary activities with other UC ERC students, including formal classes, tours of industrial operations and governmental health and safety research facilities and workshops on regional topics. Faculty conduct outreach activities throughout the world, sharing expertise and increasing knowledge of industrial hygiene.

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The Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine has three major areas of focus:

• Training physicians in the specialty of occupational medicine through the University of Cincinnati’s ACGME-accredited Occupational Medicine residency training program.
• Conducting occupational epidemiologic research of populations exposed to potential hazards within the workplace.
• The clinical evaluation of patients with medical conditions potentially related to occupational or environmental exposures.

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The PhD in Occupational Health Nursing focuses on developing nurse scientists empowered to generate, explore, and apply nursing knowledge for evolving healthcare environments. This program emphasizes a blend of occupational health nursing practice and research skills with a strong interprofessional focus. Our students take courses and complete projects alongside students in occupational medicine, industrial hygiene, and occupational safety and health engineering. Faculty mentors work closely to give students a well-balanced education emphasizing team science. Our program prepares graduates to conduct research that is interprofessional and recognized for its impact and innovation; matriculate in an educational program focused on quality and effectiveness through innovation, evidence-based curriculum, and research; and conduct service promoting equitable and healthier communities with community partners.

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The mission of the Occupational Safety and Health Engineering (OSHE) Program is to meet the national and regional needs in occupational safety and health engineering through education and research. The primary objective of the OSHE Program is to provide engineering graduate students with training in safety and health engineering to become highly capable safety professionals. A secondary objective of the Program is to introduce safety and health engineering to students who specialize in other engineering areas, enabling them to apply safety and health concepts in their engineering practice. The OSHE Program trains students through a set of fundamental safety courses, interdisciplinary projects and thesis or dissertation research to develop or evaluate an application of advanced engineering technologies to safety and health problems. Graduates from the OSHE Program become safety practitioners in public and private organizations, engineers who will design safer equipment or systems, and researchers focusing on occupational safety and health at laboratories, academia and industries.

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Under the Pilot Project Research Training Program research proposals are solicited and peer-reviewed annually from qualifying faculty and graduate students from the University of Cincinnati and the following partnering institutions – Air Force Institute of Technology, Bowling Green State University, University of Toledo – Medical Science Campus, Central State University, Purdue University, University of Kentucky, Western Kentucky University, Eastern Kentucky University, Murray State University, Ohio University and Kentucky State University.

Since 1999, the PRP program has allocated over 1.5 million dollars to support 256 pilot research projects. These projects have served as a catalyst in bringing over $42 million in additional research support to the region from sources independent of the PRP program, such as, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), National Institutes of Health (NIH), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Additionally, this program also brought 64 new investigators from other fields of expertise to the area of occupational safety and health research.

Each year the Pilot Project Research Training Program holds a symposium where grant awardees present their research findings. This symposium is attended by graduate students and faculty from regional universities and researchers from local governmental agencies.
 

To make donations and help support the Pilot Research Project Symposium visit this link and select College of Medicine as the category and Environmental and Industrial Hygiene Fund. For our records, please email erccoor@uc.edu if you make a donation.

Best Presentation Award 

A new award for best presentation at PRP Symposium has been launched to celebrate the most enthusiastic, effective and professional researcher for his/her ability to deliver an impactful and engaging presentation. All presenters are challenged and encouraged to deliver an outstanding presentation.

2022 Best Presentation Awards

Award for Distinguished Podium Presentation: Lindsey Freier, Pressure to Attend Work when Unwell: Health and Safety Consequences among Nurses

Award for Distinguished Poster Presentation: Dania Abu-Alhaija, Factors and Strategies Influencing Chemotherapy Safety among Oncology Nurses

People's Choice Award for Podium Presentation: Edrisa Sanyang and Shwe Win, Workplace Violence Among Young Black Workers Ages 18-24 in Southcentral Kentucky

People's Choice for Poster Presentation: Vamsi Kondapalli, Cool Helmet for First Responders Based on Nano Carbon Composite and Thermoelectrics

2021 Best Presentation Awards

Award for Distinguished Podium Presentation: Megha Chitranshi
Award for Distinguished Poster Presentation: Thomas Gerding and Hoda Rahmani
People's Choice Award for Podium Presentation: Yao Addor and Mohsin Sultan
People's Choice for Poster Presentation: Anuptha Pujari and Edrisa Sanyang 

Video of Last Symposium

2023 Pilot Research Project Symposium

Click here for an archive of past recorded symposiums

The objective is to offer interdisciplinary research training in the framework of developing, validating, and transferring emerging technologies and methods to improve worker health and safety. The proposed program builds on our existing TRT program, which was approved for funding in 2011. The initial focus of the TRT program was to assess firefighters’ cardiovascular risk factors, with a long-term goal to expand the program to healthcare workers. The TRT program has transitioned to emphasize healthcare, with a special focus on home healthcare. PhD students and postdoctoral fellows will be recruited as TRT trainees and will conduct their thesis research in this project. The central objective is to develop and validate a comprehensive and systematic framework for the assessment and control of cumulative health and safety risks among home healthcare workers (HHCWs). The current specific aims collect data on a range of documented or potential risk factors: 

Specific Aim 1:To quantify HHCWs’ exposures, including ergonomics and physical safety hazards, including ergonomic, fatigue levels, shift work, and physical hazards (e.g., lifting patients and medical equipment, biohazards, needlesticks, violence, environmental pests, dangerous pets, slip/trip/fall).

Specific Aim 2: Apply emerging technologies for assessing and controlling home healthcare workers’ exposures to aerosol (e.g., smoke, molds, fungi, etc) and chemical hazards (e.g., pharmaceutical, cleaning agent ingredients). 

TRT Guidelines 

Current TRT openings:

Post Doc Fellow

PhD Student Positions

TRT Presentations:

Overview and Specific Aims