Western Mining Safety & Health Training Resource Center: Facilitating Research to Practice through Learning Laboratories

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PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT In our prior Miner Safety and Health Training Programs - Western United States (U60) grants, we developed the Learning Laboratories (LLs) program, which is an industry-academic collaboration involving three universities and more than 20 mining organizations and operators representing over 20,000 mine workers in the Western US. The LLs program provides needs-specific training resources and mentorship for miners, trainers, supervisors, and health and safety (H&S) professionals across all sectors of the industry. Operators participating in the LLs program have shown measurable improvements in H&S outcomes, including reductions in both average injuries and days lost, up to 23.6% and 72.5%, respectively. Building upon these successes, we will expand our LLs program through three specific aims: 1) Provide new pathways for training and research through collaborative learning laboratories. Our LLs program offers a powerful mechanism for collaboration between researchers, safety professionals, and industry trainers. The program will be expanded to meet all core elements of NIOSH’s Research to Practice (R2P) initiative. Specifically, we will increase partnerships with trainers serving contractors, small operators, and other underserved groups and MSHA State Grants programs. We will work with investigators in academia and at NIOSH to identify industry needs, deploy new and existing training materials, facilitate synergistic research agendas, and evaluate outcomes. We will enhance technology transfer by streamlining deployment of new computer and app-based materials to industry partners for use in training and continued development. We will improve communication among LL partners through meetings, workshops, and an online forum. We will facilitate evaluation through mentorship and a cloud-based data collection and analysis platform. 2) Improve health training. By adding new health modules to our training materials, many NIOSH National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) cross-sector topic areas will be addressed, including chronic disease, musculoskeletal health, hearing loss prevention, respiratory health, and heat strain. We will also incorporate Total Worker Health topics such as mental health, substance abuse, and fatigue. 3) Develop, extend, and integrate a continuum of training resources. Successful training products developed by our program, NIOSH, and LL partners will be upgraded to incorporate new content, capabilities, and interoperability. We will develop resources addressing all levels of trainer capability, from easily integrated tabletop games to computer-based synthetic learning environments (SLEs). We will improve the accessibility of training and evaluation technologies, particularly for trainers serving smaller operators and at worksites lacking sophisticated computer hardware, using app-based mobile games and streaming services. Intermediate outcomes will include: 1) Improved H&S practices; 2) Workers empowered through active learning; 3) Increased sharing of effective training programs; and 4) An increased number of competent miners, trainers, supervisors and H&S personnel. The end outcomes of the program will include H&S culture change and reductions in mining injuries, illnesses, and fatalities.