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PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
NICOLE GREESON, MS, CIH, is associate director of the occupational and environmental safety office at Duke University and Health System. Send feedback to The Synergist.
Measuring Our Progress
BY NICOLE GREESON, AIHA PRESIDENT
Every few years, AIHA engages in a months-long process to produce a new strategic plan. The process involves not only the Board of Directors and senior staff but also a special task force of volunteers. Each plan identifies goals and outlines strategies for achieving them. As we near the end of our current strategic plan (PDF), which covers the years 2022 through 2024, now is a great time to review our performance against its goals and see how we measure up. A full accounting is impossible to achieve in a short article, so I’ll focus on a few key developments.
WILD SUCCESS In July 2021, when work on the current strategic plan was nearing completion, the Board participated in an exercise that asked us to imagine what “wild success” would look like against the goals identified in the plan. In many cases, the achievements we thought would indicate wild success have actually come to pass. Here are just a few examples:
Mentoring program improvements. We identified “an enhanced mentoring program” as a highly desired outcome. Realizing that our mentoring program wasn’t generating much engagement, we hosted a town hall event and conducted surveys to better understand member needs. This feedback prompted a total revamp of the program led by Chris Mugford, chair of the Mentoring Committee. We now offer mentoring sessions twice a year, with clear guidelines and a checklist for participants when they sign up. Since the new Mentoring Institute launched in January 2024, several members have completed the program, myself included as a mentor—a tremendous improvement over the previous version, which was difficult for many to navigate. As of mid-September, we had 85 active participants. To learn more about the Mentoring Institute, visit the AIHA website.
Defining standards of care for the profession. This achievement concerns what we now call Principles of Good Practice (PGP), which document methods for reliably and effectively protecting workers and communities from unacceptable risks. The PGP initiative was launched in 2021. Last year, we released our first PGP document, which covers occupational exposure assessment. We plan to produce several more PGP documents in different areas of OEHS, such as hearing loss prevention and respiratory protection. For more information, visit the website of the AIHA Guideline Foundation.
In many cases, the achievements we thought would indicate wild success have actually come to pass.
Generating greater interest in the Exposure Decision Analysis Registry. Research has shown that OEHS professionals’ exposure judgments are often wrong and biased low. The goal of the EDA Registry program is to improve the accuracy and efficiency of exposure assessment decisions that can be made using statistical analysis tools. The number of EDA registrants grew from 21 in December 2021 to 457 in September 2024. This remarkable growth was helped along by the availability of a free course, “Making Accurate Exposure Risk Decisions,” that prepares professionals to take the EDA Registry Exam. The course and other resources are available from the AIHA website. More than 1,400 people have completed the course, so the EDA Registry is poised for even more growth in the future. For more information, see the webpage for the program.
Determining the delta between the state of the art and the state of current practice. The knowledge that exposure judgment accuracy leaves a lot to be desired suggests that other areas of OEHS practice also fall short. Thanks to a 2023 survey that asked OEHS professionals to answer questions about their airborne chemical exposure assessments, we now have concrete data that we can use to develop education and new resources targeted to improve weaknesses in current practice. Read more about the survey in The Synergist.
COMING SOON: A NEW PLAN Our success against the current strategic plan is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our Board, our staff, and, most importantly, our volunteers, without whom none of these accomplishments would have been possible. I know that we can count on that same high level of commitment when we begin implementing our new strategic plan in January.