Mentoring and Professional Development Committee

Advisory Group Mission

Define and prioritize options for actions to be taken to improve the accuracy of exposure judgments (both qualitative and quantitative). Assist in the execution of improvement actions as assigned. Develop metrics appropriate to the actions selected and use them to track and report progress against those actions.

Purpose and Objectives

We pride ourselves on serving as advocates for the occupational and environmental health and safety (OEHS) profession and the workers and their surrounding communities that rely on their expertise. Successful protection of workers and communities from exposure risks depends on accurate exposure judgments. Yet studies have shown that the accuracy of exposure judgments is often poor ^1,5, sometimes not statistically different from random chance^5,7, and tends to be biased low^1,7.

Systematic approaches to decision making, including the routine use of statistical tools, accurate feedback loops, group discussion, practice, and structured characterization of determinants and decision rationale show promise in improving judgment accuracy^2,4,7, yet the integration of these improvement activities and tools into routine practice remains very low⁶. This lack of awareness and routine use of available tools and activities to improve exposure judgment accuracy leads to unnecessary errors in judgments about exposure risks and results in an excess risk to workers or wasted control resources.

The Improving Exposure Judgments initiative seeks to drive a significant shift in the OEHS practice paradigm: from one where tools and activities to improve exposure judgment accuracy are rarely or sporadically used, to one where their use is routine and expected.

Driving such a large change in OEHS practice will require that we take advantage both of our technical expertise and of our marketing/communication expertise. The advisory group will assist by addressing such matters as:

• Advising the Board and staff on where technical and marketing/communication resources should be focused to drive the changes in OEHS practice needed to ensure accurate exposure judgments.
• Working with appropriate technical committees and volunteer groups to understand opportunities to improve upon current tools and activities for improving exposure judgments.
• Identifying partnership opportunities for improving exposure judgments (e.g. ACGIH, NIOSH, BGC, IOHA, ASSP, NSC). Specifically, we are in ongoing discussions with ACGIH to develop a formal partnership on this advisory group, which would impact the administrative and governance aspects.
• Identifying key opportunities for enhancing OEHS training program curricula in ways that will better prepare new OEHS graduates to incorporate into their practice the routine use of the tools and activities needed to ensure accurate exposure judgments.

Initiative Timeline

While advisory group team members can expect to serve up to three years, the overall initiative to improve exposure judgments is expected to run in phases for up to ten years. Those phases, which will likely overlap as implemented (Figure 1), are:

• Phase 1: Communication and "hyper-marketing" to generate awareness of 1) existing tools and activities that will improve judgments if incorporated into routine OEHS practice; and 2) the need to change OEHS practice to routinely include the use of judgment improvement activities and tools.
• Phase 2: Evaluation of the effectiveness of existing tools and activities at improving exposure judgment accuracy.
• Phase 3: Development of new and improved tools and activities to fill gaps identified in Phase 2.
• Phase 4: Communication and marketing effort to drive use of the improved tools and activities.

Figure 1. Example Gantt Chart for Initiative Phases

Estimated Overall Time Commitment:

• 1 to 2 hour monthly Advisory Group calls
• Individual work on behalf of the Advisory Group (estimate 4 to 8 hours / month)

Advisory Group Selection Process

The process of selecting seven (7) new members to represent AIHA on this advisory group begins with an open call for applications to the AIHA membership. Applications are reviewed, and selections made by the AIHA Board. Selections are made to ensure that the committee maintains as broad a diversity of representation as is reasonably possible.

Candidates must be current and active members of AIHA and are selected to provide a balanced representation based on, but not limited to, the following criteria:

• Expertise and experience in improving exposure judgments
• A mix of employment experience (e.g., industry, academic, government, consultant)
• Geographic diversity
• Gender, ethnic, and other diversity considerations
• Prior volunteer engagement with AIHA

Applications will be accepted until February 28, 2022, 11:59 ET.

References

1. Logan, P., G. Ramachandran, J. Mulhausen and P. Hewett. (2009). Occupational exposure decisions: can limited data interpretation training help improve accuracy? Annals of occupational hygiene, 53(4), 311-324.
2. Ericsson, K. A. (Ed.). (2009). Development of professional expertise: Toward measurement of expert performance and design of optimal learning environments. Cambridge University Press."
3. Logan, P., G. Ramachandran, J. Mulhausen, S. Banerjee, and P. Hewett: Desktop study of occupational exposure judgments: Do education and experience influence accuracy? J. Occup. Environ. Hyg. 8(12):746–758 (2011).
4. Friesen, M. C., Coble, J. B., Katki, H. A., Ji, B. T., Xue, S., Lu, W., & Stewart, P. A. (2011). Validity and reliability of exposure assessors' ratings of exposure intensity by type of occupational questionnaire and type of rater. Annals of occupational hygiene, 55(6), 601-611.
5. Vadali, M., G. Ramachandran, J. Mulhausen, and S. Banerjee: Effect of training on exposure judgment accuracy of industrial hygienists. J. Occup. Environ. Hyg. 9(4):242–256 (2012).
6. Waters, M., McKernan, L., Maier, A., Jayjock, M., Schaeffer, V., & Brosseau, L. (2015). Exposure estimation and interpretation of occupational risk: enhanced information for the occupational risk manager. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, 12(sup1), S99-S111.
7. Arnold, S. F., Stenzel, M., Drolet, D., & Ramachandran, G. (2016). Using checklists and algorithms to improve qualitative exposure judgment accuracy. J. Occup. Environ. Hyg., 13(3), 159-168.

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Laurie Mutdosch, CAE
Director, Membership & Professional Community
AIHA
Falls Church VA
(703) 846-0735
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