Written by: Nancy Ly and Bhargav Chandrashekar; Occupational Medicine Residency Program

I really enjoyed the Historical Perspective on Occupation Safety and Health tour. It was a very valuable learning experience. It provided new insights into safety and health issues as well as how interdisciplinary approaches are important. Some opportunities that were meaningful was having discussions with the workers and management personnel who are experts in their field. Overall, this tour allowed me to learn highly effective ways to communicate to colleagues and workers while improving critical thinking and problem solving skills, greater personal efficacy and leadership development.

We visited an assortment of sites from Schrack Farms (a 1,000 cow dairy farm), a coal mine, the NIOSH research center in Pittsburgh, Ford Rouge Factory in Detroit, Pontiac Factory and the Materion Beryllium facility in Ohio. We learned about the various projects each group was working on as well as the hazards they faced in their particular environment. It was great to interact with students from the NY and NJ institutions and share our ideas for how to work on projects together in the future. The mentors on the tour were also really nice and ensured our safety during visiting these different sites.

Thank you to the New York/New Jersey Education and Research Center for organizing this trip and inviting our students to join you. Photos were shared by the NY/NJ ERC.