The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health, is offering supplemental funding for ‘Hazardous Waste Worker Health and Safety Training Cooperative Agreements.’
The funding is to support worker-based training to prevent and reduce exposure of hospital employees, emergency first responders, and other workers who are at risk of exposure to Ebola through their work duties.
The NIEHS Superfund Worker Training Program (WTP) will work collaboratively to develop and target safety and health training for those workers supporting the national Ebola response.
WTP will coordinate with CDC, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to provide awardees with material to develop an evidence-based curriculum that addresses:
- Clinical symptoms
- Mode of transmission
- Persistence in the environment
- Treatments
- Isolation and quarantine
- Protective equipment (PPE) usage
- Working contaminated environments
- Decontamination
- Behavioral health resiliency
NIEHS WTP program has over 20 years of experience providing workers health and safety training related to potential exposures to biological hazards as they perform their job duties. Many of the training courses provided by WTP grantees are based off of OSHA’s Bloodborne Pathogens standard, OSHA’s Respiratory Protection standard, and OSHA’s Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) standard.
WTP grantees have been involved in providing biosafety health and safety training to workers during the H5N1 outbreak, the 2001 Anthrax attacks, the H1N1 Avian Influenza 2009, mold remediation from Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, to Ebola starting in 2013. Their audiences have spanned the worker population from healthcare workers to volunteers.
Since September 2014, current NIEHS Worker Training Program (WTP) grantees have re-programmed existing extramural funds to provide Ebola preparedness training to almost 7,000 workers in 18 states. The newly proposed training under this announcement would be utilized to award supplemental funding to expand these ongoing Ebola response training efforts.
Further details are available via Funding Opportunity Announcement: PA-15-148. Applications are due April 20, 2015.
