TRAINING GRANTS

Inputs: Partners & Customers

Partnerships

Industry

The ERC and Training Project Grant programs work closely with the private and public sectors at the local, nationwide, and global levels to provide opportunities for field placements, mentors, internships and post-graduation positions for graduates. Also, individual courses are sometimes built around on-site visits and program analyses, settings that are ideal for interdisciplinary team assignments. In return, the employers have access to OSH expertise.

Labor

Historically, labor advocates and unions have played an important role in supporting the training of students in ERCs and TPGs. Labor organizations provide field placements, mentors, and post-graduate positions for trainees. Health and safety offices of unions serve as rotation sites for occupational medicine residents, nurses, and other OSH trainees, offering experiences that range from clinical activities to risk assessment and worker training. Union health and safety experts are frequently called on to present lectures and seminars that address protection of worker health and safety, policy and regulatory issues, and advocacy approaches.

Professional Associations

Professional Associations provide a framework for the practice of each of the OSH core disciplines. One of their most important roles is establishing discipline-specific competencies, around which professional training programs are shaped. Additionally, these associations formulate and publish codes of ethics, another major influence on practice and education. Professional societies promote interaction among colleagues and leadership opportunities. They also provide forums for the discussion and debate of OSH issues.

Accreditation and Certification Bodies

These professional bodies consist of two types, including board certification bodies that provide credentials to individuals such as American Board for Occupational Health Nursing (ABOHN), American Board of Industrial Hygiene (ABIH), American Board of Preventive Medicine (ABPM), and Board of Certified Safety Professionals (BCSP). In addition, specialized accrediting bodies such as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. (ABET) and Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) provide assurance that academic programs have met established quality standards. These organizations help set and maintain standards in the Occupational Safety and Health field, and may be a measure of the quality and success of programs.

Advisory Groups

Representatives from each of the groups described above and government agencies are often invited to serve in an advisory capacity for ERC and TPG training programs. These individuals review the curriculum, student profiles, and placement of graduates. Advisory groups assist in needs assessments by informing the faculty of changes in the work environment and of contemporary issues that indicate a need to modify the curriculum and/or training opportunities.

Customers

Customers are defined as people who are served or benefit from the training and the various partners who work with the training programs to achieve the outcomes, whether they are short-term, intermediate, or long-term. Customers can be direct, indirect, or global, yet all are vital to the success of training programs.

The direct customers are inevitably the institutions of higher education that compete for and receive grants, their faculty members and students, and continuing education participants who benefit from the grant expenditures. Indirect customers are those people and entities that benefit materially from the research results or the expertise acquired by the graduates. Although there is some overlap with global customers, the indirect customers are usually defined as employers, safety and health professionals, employees, governmental agencies, and communities. Global customers are usually defined as the public at large with some overlap with indirect customers as noted.