Teaching

LOHP staff provides guest lectures in UC Berkeley graduate and undergraduate courses, as well as at the UCSF School of Nursing, UCSF Occupational Medicine Program, and San Francisco State’s Community Health Education Program.

Since 2014, we have taught a graduate class, “Social Justice and Worker Health,” which builds on the concepts that worker health is public health and is also about power and equity.  Students learn about how working conditions will influence health outcomes and how the social, economic, and political context of work determines who has access to good, healthy jobs. The course is practice-oriented, providing students with practical skills in training, analysis, partnership development and other skills used in public health and community research.  It also features cutting edge, real-world examples with guest speakers from local organizing and policy campaigns. For more information, contact Suzanne Teran - steran@berkeley.edu.

You won't think the same way about work after taking this course. I highly recommend it, especially if you care about health equity.

-MPH Student

Student Internships

We offer student internships to provide students with the opportunity to apply new skills while learning about real world issues in the field of occupational safety and health. In addition to internships offered as part of the School of Public Health’s MPH summer practicum, we offer month-long residencies to occupational medicine residents from UCSF’s School of Medicine, as well as work-study options during the school year. For more information, contact Monique Hosein - monique_hosein@berkeley.edu.

Occupational Health Internship Program

LOHP is a site-sponsor of the Occupational Health Internship Program (OHIP) – a national summer internship program to help medical, nursing, public health, and other graduate and undergraduate students learn more about the field of occupational safety and health from those with the most at stake: working people.

As part of OHIP, students work in pairs and are assigned to a particular union, worker center, or community-based organization to investigate health and safety problems identified by workers. LOHP identifies projects and partners in the San Francisco Bay Area and mentors the students during their internships. For more information, contact Yasin Khan - yasin_khan@berkeley.edu. 

Some of the OHIP projects we have sponsored include:

  • Silica train-the-trainer one year lookback and evaluation, with the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, the CDPH Occupational Health Branch and the Center for Construction Research and Training
  • Health and safety training for pre-apprenticeship students in the construction trades, with Cypress Mandela Training Center (CMTC), International Chemical Workers Union Council (ICWUC), & Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU)
  • Short videos demonstrating a new method for reducing hand vibration, hand force, and silica exposure during drilling, with the Laborer’s and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), the CDPH Occupational Health Branch and the University of CA Ergonomics Program
  • Investigating health and safety issues in the food processing industry, with Working Partnerships USA
  • Evaluating the impact of nail salon owners and workers who have participated in the Nails Salon Collaborative to determine the benefits of working in a healthy nail salon, with the California Nail Salon Collaborative
  • Investigating safety and health-related issues that airline service workers experience in their workplace environment at the San Francisco International Airport, with SEIU-USWW
  • Investigating health issues for transit workers, (urban bus drivers), with the Amalgamated Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 192
  • Improving working conditions for Latino forest workers in Southern Oregon: Evaluating educational interventions in the community, with the National Forest Worker Center (NFWC)
  • Investigating health issues for recycling workers, with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 6.