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 recommends 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 

• 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.

The Outreach team co-authored a curriculum with the UI Labor Education Program to help workforce development agencies teach job seekers about their rights under labor laws, including FLSA, OSHA, workers’ compensation, FMLA, NLRA and others.  The curriculum is in its second edition and is currently being updated for a third edition. Since its release in 2015  188 organizations in 16 states have used the curriculum. You can access the curriculum here. 

The Outreach team collaborated with the 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 to use with their clients. 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, a national program sponsored by the National Council on Occupational Safety & Health, to combat gender-based violence in the workplace.

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.

We recently formed a partnership with the Labor Network for Sustainability to help 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.