Health and Safety Training Focuses on Outreach Workers

More than 500 leaders from about 250 Wisconsin community-based and faith-based organizations are taking part in a new "Train-the-Trainer" course designed to make thousands of outreach workers more aware of the health and safety hazards they face and more able to minimize their risk for illness or injury.

"People providing outreach services are very concerned about the health and well being of those they serve, but often overlook their own health, and their own health is very important to those they serve," said Leslie F. Martin MD, MPH, Medical College of Wisconsin Assistant Clinical Professor Population Health.

In partnership with the Wisconsin Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a team led by Dr. Martin in the Medical College of Wisconsin Department of Population Health developed a training module, a video on safety and health training methods, and other resources for training outreach workers and evaluating training outcomes.

The US Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is funding the development and implementation of the training module. It focuses on identification of chemical, physical, biological, ergonomic and psychological hazards, and then control of the hazards by their elimination, safe work practices, and use of personal protective equipment.

Volunteers and Vulnerability
Both paid and unpaid workers can fall under OSHA regulations. OSHA has ruled that when volunteers work along with paid employees and may place paid employees at risk, the volunteers must also be trained appropriately in related health and safety matters. The current program helps agencies fulfill their OSHA obligations to both paid and unpaid workers.

Training sessions should be completed by October 2007, said Dr. Martin. Community partners helping recruit and train participants include the Wisconsin Nursing Association, the state Interfaith Council, and the Wisconsin Council of Safety.

"We are training vulnerable workers who serve vulnerable populations," said Dr. Martin. "Through OSHA we have obtained three related grants in successive years. These all have all been collaborative 'train the trainer' projects between MCW and the community.

"The first of these programs focused specifically on respiratory protection in nursing homes. Tuberculosis had been decreasing for many years, but a little more than a decade ago in conjunction with HIV we experienced an epidemic of TB. As we worked with people at risk for TB we progressed to looking at other hazards and additional groups of vulnerable workers."

Outreach Workers at Risk
Outreach workers are vulnerable. "Their work, the situations in which they do it, and the people they serve all may change quickly and be hard to predict." Dr. Martin said, "they may be assisting with newborns, working in a food distribution center, or responding to a catastrophe such as Hurricane Katrina.

"Faith-based groups and service organizations provide an enormous amount of outreach service, as do businesses like home health organizations," said Dr. Martin. "What they have in common are outreach workers frequently confronted with situations that they don't have a whole lot of preparation for.

"In those situations they're confronted with hazards. In a crisis like Katrina it's easy for a group of outreach workers to throw their shovels into a pickup truck and go to help out, only to become more a part of the problem than a part of the solution. If you don't have an awareness of hazards, you don't even see them, let alone take effective steps to control them.

"You're looking at the chemicals under the kitchen sink but you don't know the dangers they pose in certain circumstances. Or you're seeing a high-risk individual who is coughing or has skin lesions but you don't think in terms of tuberculosis or other infectious diseases."

Identification and Control of Hazards
The training and related materials place risks faced by outreach workers into the general areas of biological, chemical, ergonomic, physical and psychological hazards in order to make them more quickly and easily identifiable to outreach volunteers.

"We were very successful with the first program on respiratory protection, reaching more than half the nursing homes in the state," said Dr. Martin. "We anticipate excellent outcomes as well from the materials, trainings and evaluation funded by the second and third OSHA grants.

"When outreach workers understand the different categories of hazards and analyze their job tasks they can then ask 'What are the worst or most common hazards associated with this job?' 'What can we do to control those hazards?' and 'What is the highest priority, and who will do it?'"

"This training helps outreach workers be safer, and helps them deal with emergent situations."

For More Information
For more information, and to find out about participating in or scheduling a free 4-6 hour Train-the-Trainer session for outreach worker trainers, please e-mail Leslie F. Martin, MD, MPH at lfmartin@mcw.edu or call 414-702-0509.

Dan Ullrich
HealthLink Contributing Writer

MCW Health News presents up-to-date information on patient care and medical research by the physicians of the Medical College of Wisconsin.