AIHA has long formed partnerships with similar organizations to help us achieve our goals. Partnerships are a force multiplier that allows relatively small organizations like ours to pursue aims that would likely be out of reach if we were working entirely on our own. The number of AIHA’s partnerships has grown steadily over the years. Below, I’ve singled out a few particularly fruitful partnerships and described their recent activities and achievements.

ACGIH. Founded the same year as AIHA, our sister society shares with us much more than a long history of collaboration. Since 2004, AIHA and ACGIH have jointly published the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, and members from both organizations sit on the JOEH LLC board of directors. ACGIH has also played a key role in our Defining the Science and Improving Exposure Judgments initiatives. Both organizations routinely offer mutual discounts on educational products to each other’s members.

American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. ACOEM and AIHA have regularly partnered to produce webinars on topics of mutual interest for our memberships. The most recent collaboration was a webinar held last month on integrating wearable devices into heat stress management plans.

American Institute for Conservation. At our November meeting, the AIHA Board approved a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with AIC. AIHA and AIC already have a strong history of collaboration through AIHA’s Museum and Cultural Heritage Industry Working Group (MCHIWG), which includes many members from both the OEHS and conservator professions. An interesting project that recently got underway is a collaboration between the MCHIWG and the Exposure Assessment Strategies Committee to identify exposure data for the conservator profession that will then undergo statistical analysis and may eventually lead to an industry-wide exposure assessment.

American Society of Safety Professionals. ASSP represents one of AIHA’s strongest partnerships. We often work together through the Intersociety Forum, a coalition of more than twenty OEHS organizations. Recently, the Forum developed a document that explains how OEHS contributes to business growth and profitability. Last month, the Fellows from both organizations participated in a virtual town hall meeting. ASSP and AIHA also partner with NSC and NIOSH to hold the annual Prevention through Design Award. The relationship between AIHA and ASSP was recently featured in The Synergist.

ASHRAE. The OEHS profession is a critical stakeholder in the activities of organizations like ASHRAE that manage consensus standards related to indoor air quality (IAQ). For this reason, AIHA formed its IAQ Task Force a few years ago, whose goals are to help prioritize IAQ activities across AIHA’s volunteer groups and to build a closer relationship with ASHRAE. One example of this closer relationship is an effort to publish papers and articles of mutual interest in each other’s publications.

British Occupational Hygiene Society. The AIHA Construction Committee is working on information for a web portal related to the BOHS Breathe Freely initiative that would be targeted to an American audience. Launched in 2015, Breathe Freely raises awareness of occupational lung disease in the United Kingdom and encourages measures that would protect workers’ health.

Building Owners and Managers Association International. BOMA International, a trade association for commercial real estate professionals, has expressed interest in pending AIHA training on waterborne pathogens. AIHA is developing certificate programs based in part on the AIHA publication Recognition, Evaluation, and Control of Legionella in Building Water Systems, 2nd edition. The certificate programs are expected to be available in April 2026.

CSHEMA - EHS Leadership in Higher Education. Our collaborations with CSHEMA have included a presence at each other’s annual conference. We are jointly exploring the possibility of developing educational videos for students.

Health Action Alliance. HAA is a network of employers that supports business leaders by providing science-backed tools for navigating health challenges and conducting research to inform decision-making. Last year, AIHA CEO Larry Sloan was appointed to HAA’s National Commission on Climate and Workforce Health. In his role as commissioner, Larry has been sharing relevant AIHA resources with the HAA network such as our heat stress app and our technical framework on climate change for the OEHS professional.

IBEC: The Integrated Bioscience and Built Environment Consortium. During the COVID-19 pandemic, AIHA and IBEC worked closely together to develop, maintain, and update resources that businesses could use to ensure they were operating safely and protecting the health of employees, customers, and communities. This work was funded by grants from NIOSH, which led to the creation of Commit to C.A.R.E. (C2C), an initiative that shares science-based information about infectious diseases and how to reduce their spread in the workplace. AIHA and IBEC continue to work together on C2C.

National Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health (Vietnam). Last year, I was honored to participate as a keynote speaker at the first conference on occupational safety, health, and environment in Hanoi, whose organizing committee members included NIOEH leaders. After the conference, I led an AIHA delegation that met with representatives from several OEHS entities, including NIOEH, which is responsible for both regulatory actions and OEHS research in Vietnam. AIHA’s relationship with NIOEH and other Vietnamese organizations is one of the successes for our international outreach as we have many resources that address hazards faced by the Vietnamese workforce. During our visit, the NIOEH delegates indicated that the organization values its MOU with AIHA, which we were in the process of renewing as this issue of The Synergist went to press.

National Environmental Health Association. In 2024, AIHA members co-presented a joint NEHA-AIHA webinar on Legionella. NEHA also distributed an AIHA survey assessing needs related to education on waterborne pathogens.

National Safety Council. In 2023, AIHA’s work with NSC largely focused on the Work to Zero program, an initiative that promotes the adoption of new safety technologies toward the goal of eliminating workplace fatalities by the year 2050. Last year, AIHA entered into a more comprehensive MOU with NSC that calls for broader collaboration. NSC is another organization that participates in the Intersociety Forum, and it partners with AIHA, ASSP, and NIOSH on the Prevention through Design Award.

NIOSH. AIHA’s longstanding relationship with the world’s foremost OEHS research agency is responsible for a large portfolio of essential work that benefits AIHA members and the workers we protect. Our ongoing collaborations with NIOSH are too many to list here; recent work with NIOSH has focused on AIHA’s Defining the Science initiative and the development of training on statistical tools. We have two MOUs with NIOSH, one related to general activities and another specific to the agency’s Total Worker Health initiative.

Occupational Hygiene Training Association. A new agreement signed last year initiated a four-way partnership among OHTA, AIHA, the Board for Global EHS Credentialing, and Workplace Health Without Borders-U.S. to help OEHS professionals in emerging economies achieve the prestigious CIH credential. The signatories to the agreement each offer valuable assistance including mentors, discounts on membership and training courses, and even free exams to encourage obtaining the CIH.

Safety for Nonprofits. S4NP was founded to support nonprofit organizations’ efforts to improve workplace safety and health in their operations. AIHA and ACGIH jointly hosted a webinar about the work of S4NP last year that provided background on S4NP’s formation and case studies on the work S4NP has performed for nonprofits. A recording of the webinar is available on YouTube.

The AIHA website has a comprehensive, up-to-date list of AIHA’s partners. There, you’ll find information about activities we’ve conducted with our partners over the last three years, the names of contacts for each partnership, and, where applicable, links to formal agreements and MOUs. If you have any questions about these activities or would like to suggest another organization that AIHA should consider partnering with, don’t hesitate to reach out.