The SEIU Education and Support Fund and the contractors in its consortium, Local 1199 SEIU and SEIU United Healthcare Worker West, are applying for an award under the Hazardous Waste Worker Training (HWWT) Project for five years at a total cost of $4,047,287. Through the unique access provided to this Project by the national network of local unions in the Service Employees International Union and its partnering organizations, the Project proposes to prevent acute and chronic injury and illness among workers who are exposed to hazardous materials in emergency situations. The Project will accomplish this by training 15, 000 workers using existing curricula for our HAZWOPER and HAZWOPER -supporting classes, including 5,700 workers at the emergency response awareness level, 600 workers at the Hospital First Receiver emergency-response operations-level, 3,550 healthcare workers in preparedness for pandemic flu and other aerosol transmissible diseases (ATD) and 500 workers at the emergency response operations level confined space entry. The target population is employed In a wide range of jobs in hospitals and the public sector. The target population is employed in 40 states with a concentration in New York, California, Connecticut and New Hampshire. The training will be conducted primarily by an existing team of 75 specially trained SEIU-provided rank-and-file worker trainers. The Project proposes to train an additional 100 worker trainers to expand our team of peer trainers. Two new 8-hour classes will be developed and taught. One will cover Healthcare-based Respiratory Protection Programs and the second, the new California OSHA Aerosol Transmissible Disease standard. We will update our Operations-level Hospital First Receiver class to include relevant new guidance from OSHA's new First Receiver Guidance for EMTs. We will also revise our existing Pandemic Flu activities to include lessons being learned from the current response to the H1N1 flu pandemic. Project consortium staff will provide ongoing support for worker trainers and will hold an annual trainer meeting for all worker trainers. The overall goal of this Project is to prevent acute and chronic injury and illness among workers who are exposed to hazardous materials in emergency situations by raising the level of awareness of hazardous materials emergency response in workers in the target populations in healthcare, including nurses, and among public facility workers. Hazardous Waste Worker Training Program (HWWTP)
| Lippin, T M; Eckman, A; Calkin, K R et al. (2000) Empowerment-based health and safety training: evidence of workplace change from four industrial sectors. Am J Ind Med 38:697-706 |
