PDC Topic 1

Total Worker Health®

 

Instructors

 

John Staley, PhD, MSEH: Dr. Staley is the Deputy Director and Director of Outreach and Continuing Education at the North Carolina Occupational Safety Health Education and Research Center, and is a member of the BSPH Core Faculty in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. He is also Co-Director of the Outreach and Education Core for the Carolina Center for Total Worker Health® and Wellbeing. Dr. Staley has over 20 years of experience as a preparedness and workplace safety and health researcher and instructor. He collaborates with the first responder and military communities to improve preparedness and response education and practice, as well as conducts research and translation of findings using a Total Worker Health® approach for issues impacting the health of vulnerable occupational groups throughout the Southeastern United States.  He is currently a research investigator in the national STEPPS Study assessing physicians’ pandemic stress.

 

Alice Ammerman, DrPH: Dr. Ammerman is Co-Director of the Outreach and Education Core of Carolina Center for Total Worker Health® and Well-being, is Director of UNC’s Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention – (HPDP) and Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Gillings School of Global Public Health. HPDP has a history of focusing on worksite interventions for rural blue collar women, including health promotion and capacity building. Ammerman’s research focus is on chronic disease prevention and management, particularly cardiovascular disease and health disparities. Her research builds on strong community engagement for  developing and testing interventions that have potential for scale up and dissemination. Dr. Ammerman has expertise in  “D&I science” (dissemination and implementation research) focused on understanding the context and the barriers/facilitators as part of the research process as key to developing sustainable interventions that can live beyond research funding. Finally, Ammerman teaches a course and has been an active participant in public health (social) entrepreneurship. This is a sustainable approach to scale up and dissemination that also has great potential to contribute to economic development as well as worker health.

 

Maija Leff, MPH: Ms. Leff is the associate director for the Carolina Center for Total Worker Health® and Wellbeing. She also serves as program manager and adjunct instructor for the UNC Gillings Graduate Certificate in TWH. In her role as associate director, Maija contributes to strategic planning and administrative oversight of overall center activities. She also is part of the Outreach Core team, actively developing TWH Continuing Education opportunities for working professionals in the southeast region. As a practitioner, Ms. Leff has focused on training and capacity-building interventions to promote workers’ wellbeing. From 2018-2020, she served as Total WellBeing Coordinator with UNC-Chapel Hill’s Work/Life and Wellness Program, where she helped recruit, train and provide technical assistance to Wellness Champions developing wellbeing programs in 16 Schools and Divisions across the UNC campus. Her most recent research role was as Co-Investigator with the Carolina PROSPER study, which sought to assess the feasibility of implementing a TWH intervention in small- to medium-sized businesses during the pandemic.

 

 

 

 

PDC Topic 2

Engineering Controls – How to Bring Effective Noise Controls to Your Workplace

 

Description: This 4-hour seminar will guide attendees through the process to identify practical approaches to efficient noise control design, by understanding the problem, working through a collaborative process to develop solutions, educate your operators and management about the challenges and benefits, and know when to ask for and optimize the support from an outside expert.

 

Instructor

 

Erik Miller-Klein, PE, INCE Bd. Cert.

 

Education: BS Mechanical Engineering - Acoustics, University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT BA Music, Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA Registration

 

Licenses: Acoustical Engineering: Oregon, 2010 (#84336), INCE Board Certified

 

Professional Affiliations: ASHRAE: Chair (2017-2020) of TC 2.6 Sound & Vibration Committee and Member of 189.1 Committee and lead for Acoustic Control section of Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings, AIHA-American Industrial Hygienist Association and active with Noise Committee, ASTM Committee E33 on Building and Environmental Acoustics, WELL Building Standard Sound Advisor (2018-2020), ASA-Acoustical Society of America and Technical Committee on Architectural Acoustics (TCAA), INCE-USA-Institute of Noise Control Engineering USA, WSSHE-Washington State Society for Health Care Engineering, ASHE-American Society for Healthcare Engineering, FGI Acoustics Committee Member (2019-Present), DBIA-Design-Build Institute of America