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The next meeting of the CWHSG (California Work & Health Study Group) will be held on Tuesday January 22^nd at the UCI COEH from 10 am to 4pm. The agenda includes:

1)     A morning session devoted to bringing participating colleagues up to date on participants research and programmatic activities and getting feedback on same.

2)     An afternoon session which will be devoted to a discussion of PAR (Participatory Action Research).

Agenda

10:00 AM – 12:00 Noon: Introductions and update on current activities (talk-a-round)

1:00 PM – 4:00 PM: Participatory Action Research

SPEAKERS:

1)     Ellen Rosskam -  currently a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.,  will be a guest of the UCI COEH on Tuesday January 22^nd. Ellen will be presenting Tuesday eve at Grand Rounds on the topic of  and will also be participating in our PAR workshop as part of the CWHSG meeting.  Ellen will discuss PAR – its action orientation and involvement of stakeholders --  how it is appropriate and useful for the epidemiologic study of health issues in worker populations as well as the implications of PAR for policy work.    

2)     June Fisher  - director of the TDICT Project in SF - will discuss two experiences with PAR – the SF Muni Bus Driver Project as well as the Health Care Worker Safety by Design Project. The latter is part of the TDICT Project (Training for Development of Innovative control technologies). What's unique about the TDICT Project is that it brings together the end users (stakeholders) -- the line nurses who use the devices--and product designers to develop safety criteria.

3)     Deborah Gordon –  will discuss a health project she worked on in Italy for woman with breast cancer which used PAR. The project’s primary  aim was trying to change the ‘culture’ around cancer, the  first means were by articulating, interpreting, and communicating  the experiences of these women through their cancer trajectories. With an interdisciplinary team and an ethnographic interview schedule, the experience of the 20 women with breast cancer was tracked, divided into two groups, over 10 meetings; which were taped and transcribed and then were wrote up in a locally- produced volume, used as an exhibit, and part of a daylong conference.

4)     Pam Tau Lee – is the Coordinator of Public Programs for LOHP (Labor  Occupational Health Program) at the  UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She was co-director of the Hotel Workers Study which examined the health and working conditions of room cleaners in four major San Francisco hotels as well as in Las Vegas which has helped reduce the number of rooms that workers must clean each day. Pam will discuss her experiences with PAR involving hotel workers and Unite Here!

5)     Cathy Heaney is an Associate Professor of psychology and human biology at Stanford University.  She has a focus on occupational health and safety and has written extensively on the topic of worksite health interventions. She will be a discussant.