Multi Union National Chemical Emergency Response Training program

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HWWT Project Summary The ICWUC seeks to continue its national multi union training program to protect a range of collateral duty emergency responders and develop a cadre of worker trainers (total of 496 classes; 7,258 trainees; 80,852 contact hours). Our goal is to have active, informed workers and trainers on the front lines of handling toxic substances to recognize the danger of spills, leaks and catastrophic releases, protect themselves and strive to improve their workplaces. To accomplish this, we use a range of adult education principles and techniques that rely on the knowledge and experiences of the participants to teach key principles in a non-threatening and engaging method that motivates trainees to improve their worksites. We will include two new partners, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics (AOEC) to form a 12-member Consortium. Both AFSCME and AOEC fully participated in our NIEHS Infectious Disease grant (IDR). AFSCME, represents workers in a wide range of public sector jobs with a diversity of hazards and is the nation's largest public services employee’s union with more than 1.4 million members including police, corrections, fire, social workers, ancillary healthcare providers engineers and environmental services. AOEC has physicians who reviewed and improved our infectious disease modules and attended the IDR Train the Trainer class to answer technical questions. We will conduct expand our Spanish classes including a Spanish Trainer development class (trainers who have been through or taught a Spanish Train the Trainer class), hold a three day Spanish Hazmat awareness class and have bilingual staff and trainers teach these classes. We will continue to develop worker trainers, offer hazmat classes to industrial, health care, government and school workers and continue to work with a number of other NIEHS Grantees. The ICWUC Center will continue to collect pre and post-training survey data of participants' attempts to change their workplaces (which has resulting in two published papers). By comparing this paired data from the same individuals, this has indicated that the intervention of the ICWUC Center's program motivates, educates and arms these workers with skills to return to their worksite and make improvements in site safety plans and procedures. Two other articles documented the specific improvement after training all hourly and salaried employees at two facilities.