National Occupational Injury Research Symposium (NOIRS)

Opening and Closing Plenaries

The opening and closing plenaries offered presentations by five contributing experts and authors in the field of occupational safety and health.

Opening Plenary

Dr. John Howard, Director of NIOSH, has a wide array of experience in the occupational health and safety field. He spent the last 12 years administering occupational and public safety programs. He has also served as an assistant professor of environmental and occupational medicine at the University of California at Irvine; served as medical director and chief clinician of the Philip Mandelker AIDS Prevention Clinic; and served as an assistant counselor to the Under Secretary of Health and Human Services. Dr. Howard is a board-certified occupational physician and has written numerous papers on occupational health law and policy.
 

John Henshaw, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, heads the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). He has more than 26 years’ experience directing environmental safety and health programs in the chemical industry and has recently served as director of environment, safety and health for Astaris LLC. Mr. Henshaw is a Certified Industrial Hygienist and a Registered Occupational Hygienist. He has authored articles on safety and health management as well as chapters in industrial hygiene and management textbooks. He also served three and a half years in the Air National Guard as a bio-environmental engineer with the rank of Captain and was honorably discharged in 2000.

Sue Baker, an epidemiologist specializing in injury prevention, serves as Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. She loves to teach and takes pride in the accomplishments of the many students who have passed through the program at Hopkins, which includes a NIOSH-supported training program in occupational injury prevention. Sue is an ardent advocate of policy changes that will prevent injuries. Much of her teaching and research is designed to influence the legislators, administrators, media representatives, and others whose decisions can determine the likelihood of injury for thousands of people. Sue’s occupational safety research has included motor vehicle and airplane crashes, injuries to automotive workers and the military, and issues such as alcohol and the design of workplaces and vehicles. She is a licensed private pilot and her aviation research includes a focus on pilots of commuter aircraft crashes.

Closing Plenary

Lisa Cullen, industrial hygienist, has spent fifteen years assessing workplace hazards, developing and implementing compliance procedures, and performing exposure monitoring. She holds a certification by the American Board of Industrial Hygiene, is a volunteer for the FIGHT Project, and is a contributing editor for Occupational Hazards Magazine. Lisa is the author of the recently released book, “A Job to Die For: Why so Many Americans are Killed, Injured or Made Ill at Work and What to Do About It”. She will discuss the safety and health disconnect between reality and public perception in a presentation entitled “Reality versus the Public Perception of Occupational Injury.”

Dr. David Parker, Physician in Occupational Medicine, has served in the Epidemic Intelligence Service with the CDC and has published over 50 scientific manuscripts in the area of occupational safety and health. He is the author of “Stolen Dreams: Portraits of Working Children” and “By These Hands: Portraits from the Factory Floor.” Dr. Parker’s photographs have been widely exhibited throughout the US and Canada and are in collections of the Library of Congress, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Lowell National Historical Park, and the national headquarters of the AFL-CIO. Dr. Parker will present his photographs/slides in a presentation entitled “Picturing Work: The Industrial Landscape and Occupational Health.”