NIOSH Youth@Work—Talking Safety Assessment Now Available

Contact: Mandy McCall (800) 334-6283 ext. 252

Big Rapids, MI,(November 30, 2016)– The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and NOCTI are pleased to announce a collaboration to promote and advance occupational safety and health practices among young workers. The collaboration includes the development and delivery of the Youth@Work—Talking Safety assessment. The assessment will be available to all students completing the Talking Safety curriculum.

Youth@Work—Talking Safety: A Safety & Health Curriculum for Young Workers is a free curriculum designed to help educators teach young people the basics of job health and safety in a fun and interesting way. The curriculum includes information relevant to every occupation. The activities highlight hazards and prevention strategies from a wide variety of workplaces where young people are often employed. Teachers, safety experts, school administrators, and others have contributed over many years to the development of this valuable resource. The assessment component, for which NOCTI provided development oversight, measures a student's acquisition of the foundational workplace safety and health skills taught through the NIOSH curriculum. NIOSH and NOCTI's partnership will allow students to receive a digital badge for successfully meeting the passing benchmark for the assessment

"This assessment and subsequent digital badge will provide students with a credible mechanism for proving their understanding of a safe environment. The Talking Safety program provides a foundation that will help individuals throughout their careers. The digital badge provides a means for displaying that knowledge to anyone they see fit. We applaud NIOSH for undertaking a task that crosses so many occupations and look forward to promoting it to schools across the nation," said John C. Foster, Ph.D., President/CEO of NOCTI.

NIOSH is equally as excited about the opportunities for students. "Providing young workers with the knowledge they need to stay safe on the job not only ensures their health and safety in their first jobs, but also sets them on a path to feeling empowered to make their safety and health on the job a priority throughout their working lives," said NIOSH Director John Howard, M.D. "Working with NOCTI helps us further this goal by providing a way for young workers to demonstrate that they understand the foundations of workplace safety and health and are ready to apply these new skills."

For further information about the Talking Safety assessment offered through NOCTI, please visit http://www.nocti.org/NIOSH.cfm

About the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is the U.S. federal institute that conducts research and makes recommendations to prevent worker injury and illness. NIOSH research is key to these efforts and provides practical solutions to identified problems. For more information, visit http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/index.htm.

About NOCTI

N OCTI is the nation’s largest provider of industry-based credentials and partner industry certifications for career and technical education (CTE) programs across the nation. NOCTI provides curricular and instructional improvement tools for secondary and post-secondary institutions. In addition to over 100 industry-based credentials, NOCTI also works with customers to create customized solutions. Services include job and task analysis, assessment construction, assessment delivery, credentialing, score reporting, score interpretation, digital badging, and professional development workshops. Nocti Business Solutions, a subsidiary of NOCTI, addresses the needs of business/industry by offering customized solutions to enhance workplace productivity. For more information, visit www.nocti.org.