Great Lakes Center for Occupational Health and Safety

Policy Brief

• One of every 8 Illinoisans is over age 60. This number will rise to 1 in 5 by 2030. By 2030, Illinois is expected to have a 76% gain in the population aged 65 to 74, an 80% gain in those aged 75 to 84, and a 65% gain in those over 85. Nationally, Census Bureau projections predict continuing increases in the older adult population. With many older adults prefer staying in their own communities for long-term care, the role of homecare aides is increasing in importance.  However, homecare aids are generally underpaid and lack training to communicate with older adults with dementia, depression or memory loss.  Facing a variety of physical and mental health risks from their work, this brief published in 2018, recommended homecare aides need revised training curricula that include skills and resources necessary to reduce work-related injuries and health hazards.
  Read the full policy brief here. 

Guide for Employers 

• In 2002, the Outreach program, in partnership with the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs, created the Health and Safety Advisor for Home Care Agencies.
  View it here.

Publication

• Love, M., Tendick-Matesanz, F., Thomason, J., Carter, D., Glassman, M., & Zanoni, J. (2017). “Then They Trust You …”: Managing Ergonomics in Home Care. NEW SOLUTIONS: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, 27(2), 225–245. https://doi.org/10.1177/1048291117712544
  Download a pdf of the article here.

Outreach staff collaborated with a team of staff from the University of Illinois Labor Education Program and the Chicago Jobs Council to design an open-access Workers’ Rights for Workforce Development curriculum. Its eight chapters cover all of the content of workplace rights and consist of activities designed to be used in interactive workshops and integrated into existing workforce programs. Organized as a “how-to manual”, it is comprised of “pick and choose” activities ranging from 10-60 minutes so practitioners with limited time can select the content most appropriate for their program and participants from the following chapters:

• Unit 1: Introduction and methods
• Unit 2: Introduction to workers’ rights on the job
• Unit 3: Wage and hour laws and protection
• Unit 4: Getting hired, disciplined, and getting fired
• Unit 5: Leaves of absence
• Unit 6: Discrimination on the job
• Unit 7: Worker health and safety
• Unit 8: Organizing workers

As the first curriculum ever developed in the United States that is entirely focused on connecting workers’ rights education to workforce development programming, the content is regularly updated and a fourth edition is currently being developed.

The third edition of the curriculum is available for free download by clicking here.

Contact
For more information, contact Alison at aquesada@illinois.edu.

The Outreach team collaborated with the UIC Midwest Latino Health and Research Training and Policy Center to develop HEAL, a guide to healthy eating and active living for community health workers and health educators and their clients.

The HEAL brochure describing the curriculum can be downloaded here.

More information about HEAL can be found here.

If you would like to request access to the curriculum please contact mwlatino@uic.edu.

The Outreach team participates on the steering committee of Our Turn: Sexual Harassment Action Network, a national program sponsored by the National Council For Occupational Safety and Health (COSH), to combat gender-based violence in the workplace.

The Taking Action Together to Stop Sexual Harassment in the Workplace curriculum is designed to provide workers and worker organizations with information and tools to take action to prevent and address sexual and gender-based harassment and violence in the workplace. A PDF of the curriculum can be downloaded here

The Outreach team is participating on a project led by the ChicAgo Center for Health and the EnvironmenT (CACHET). 

CACHET is currently developing an app for community residents to track and report environmental hazards. They are in the pilot testing phase now and CACHET staff will monitor the data and look for patterns.

The CACHET team is also collaborating with environmental justice partners to collect audio stories of community residents to use in advocacy work. StoryCorps is providing technical resources and will archive the stories at the Library of Congress.

The Great Lakes Center for Occupational Health and Safety recognizes the impacts of climate change on the health and safety of workers across the country.

In 2019, the outreach team partnered with the Labor Network for Sustainability to support their Third National Convergence on Climate, June 28-30, 2019, in Chicago. Outreach  Program Development Manager, Marsha Love, moderated the workshop: Complacency Kills: Climate Change and Worker Health and Safety.

The Center hosted a panel discussion on Climate Change, Workers’ Health and a Just Transition. Check out the full video here!

The Great Lakes Center for Occupational Health and Safety hosts and mentors two interns every summer in this national program. Its purpose is to attract future health & safety practitioners into the field. We partner with workers’ rights organizations, such as labor unions and worker centers, so the students can learn first hand from workers about hazardous working conditions often found in low wage jobs and to make recommendations for changes.

Previous projects have focused on the hazards faced by temporary workers in manufacturing jobs in various industries (food processing, metal processing, warehousing and distribution), grocery workers and scrap metal recycling.  The current project concerns violence in the fast food industry.

For more information about OHIP visit here.

OHIP interns contributed to the following publication:
Bonney, T., Forst, L., Rivers, S., Love, M., Pratap, P., Bell, T., & Fulkerson, S. (2017). Occupational Safety and Health in the Temporary Services Industry: A Model for a Community–University Partnership. NEW SOLUTIONS: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, 27(2), 246–259. https://doi.org/10.1177/1048291117712545
Download the pdf version here.

During the height of the COVID-19 public health emergency, the Great Lakes Center for Occupational Health and Safety participated in developing this Response to Coronavirus COVID-19 resource guide.