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#104: How a Passion for Worker Justice and Microbes Led to a Career in Industrial Hygiene
155 Plays1 year ago
Like many of our guests, Dr. Amber Mitchell didn’t start out with the goal of becoming a safety professional. But chance encounters and unique opportunities that presented themselves throughout her career seemed to be pushing her toward that end.
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Transcript
Introduction to Dr. Amber Mitchell
00:00:08
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode is recorded May 11, 2023. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer.
Career Overview and Public Health Focus
00:00:19
Speaker
My guest today is Dr. Amber Mitchell. Dr. Mitchell is a bit of a gig Accidental Safety Pro.
00:00:25
Speaker
She has traditional schooling, a master's and doctorate in public health with a focus on occupational health and preventing exposure to infectious disease. Amber has worked with almost every sector of business starting with the federal government as an industrial hygienist and OSHA's very first national bloodborne pathogens coordinator. I can't wait to hear about that.
00:00:48
Speaker
She's also worked in private sector for large medical device companies and for tiny startups. Amber has also worked in academia and for state government in her roles at George Washington University, Brighamton University, and the University of Texas School of Public Health.
00:01:04
Speaker
Today, she runs a nonprofit called the International Safety Center and GIGS in several roles with the federal government, including OSHA, and during the pandemic with NIH's National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, like me.
00:01:19
Speaker
Amber also fancies individual health and wellness. She's a certified Pilates instructor and nutrition fitness specialist. You can find her teaching and practicing at her local Pilates, Club Pilates Studios. She lives on the water in beautiful Galveston County, Texas, just south of Houston.
Family Background and Career Shift
00:01:37
Speaker
Welcome to the show, Amber. Oh, Jill, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited for our conversation today. Me too. Gosh, I can't wait to dig into so many of these things just in your introduction, but
00:01:50
Speaker
You know, this is the Accidental Safety Pro, so where do you want to start in your story? Maybe we start where I realized I didn't want to go. Absolutely.
00:02:01
Speaker
I came up from a family of healthcare providers. My mom was a nurse. My grandmother was a nurse. My grandfather was a doctor. My cousins are nurses or teachers or cops. We have a lot of service providers in my family, which I'm extremely proud of. And I thought I wanted to go to medical school. So at the college age, I was pre-med with a focus in psychology.
00:02:31
Speaker
Thinking, eh, psychology is...
00:02:34
Speaker
round enough, it's kind of like an English major, you know, you know, you have to do something else with it. But I was right around when my senior year came around, I was deathly afraid and terrible, terrible test taker, terrible test taker. I had to take pre-calculus four times in college because I couldn't test out of it. And so I was scared of the MCATs.
00:03:03
Speaker
Makes sense. Yes. So while everybody, my classmates were studying for the MCATs, I said, I'm going to go do something else. So I graduated college and I went to live with my friends who hadn't graduated college yet up in a tiny little lake town called Oswego, New York, right on Lake Ontario.
Post-College Exploration and Education
00:03:28
Speaker
And I waited tables. I was really good at bartending and really good at waiting tables.
00:03:33
Speaker
So I decided, my mom had passed away when I was a junior in college, so I was on my own and I really was a bit lost. So I decided to move back home to her hometown, Washington DC.
00:03:54
Speaker
and I bartended some more and I started a program at George Washington University for what was then exercise science.
00:04:07
Speaker
I thought I wanted to do PT or exercise science, something involving fit and fabulous people. And that year I realized I was a year into the exercise science masters that most people wanted to be coaches or continue to train athletes and I was not athletic.
00:04:29
Speaker
I fouled out of every single basketball game I played in high school. I couldn't run. I couldn't hit a ball for anything. But you wanted to be fit and well. I get why you were attracted to that. That makes sense. So then that year the School of Public Health opened at GW. And it was part, get this Jill, it was part of the medical school.
00:04:56
Speaker
I am going, if I step foot in the medical school, technically I am a medical school student. The school of public health hadn't yet had an official building or anything like that, so I started my master's in public health and worked full time while I did it.
00:05:18
Speaker
That's how I ended up getting into public health was realizing I didn't have what it took to take the MCATs and wouldn't you know, luck would have it that I stepped foot into the medical school for my advanced schooling anyway. So I had kind of made it. That sounds like destiny. And anyone who's an apprehensive test taker understands this completely and thanks for the vulnerability and sharing that. I shared that too.
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah, so here you are, public health. What did you think it was? I thought it was what I did, which was the concentration in health promotion and disease prevention. So I thought, OK, well, if I don't train athletes and I didn't want to do mostly exercise science, people do a lot of cardiac rehab.
00:06:13
Speaker
I knew I liked the sense of broader health, so programmatic health versus individual health that a physician might provide. I knew I didn't want to go into nursing because I had seen what it had done to my mom, incredibly stressful profession.
00:06:38
Speaker
And my grandparents had passed at this time. They both died when I was 16. So I was still a bit unrooted. And so I finished my master's degree, paid for it all by myself.
00:06:56
Speaker
With all of that wonderful experience bartending. Yeah, bartending was the best escape the best networking the best way to fit into a community. And so I love that part of it.
00:07:12
Speaker
there was an opening for a postgraduate fellowship and I thought, sweet, I can postpone figuring out what I want to do for another year, not realizing that that year would set the tone for the rest of my accidental safety pro journeys.
Fellowship and Military Health Exposure
00:07:32
Speaker
So what happened? Well, that fellowship was one of my professors, Kathy Hunting, she had this availability. It was for a fellowship with the Uniform Services University, which is in Bethesda, Maryland. It sits on the campus with the Naval Hospital. And honestly, Jill, I had thought about joining the military my whole life. I come from a big military family.
00:08:01
Speaker
And I thought, this is a path that I need to explore while being a civilian. So they had opened up this program postgraduate fellowship in environmental health. And I thought,
00:08:17
Speaker
Again, this is life leading me down a path that I had thought I wanted to explore and didn't know it. And I was young and honestly really excited to be around a lot of military boys, let's say.
00:08:35
Speaker
That makes sense. Yeah. And I had two absolutely wonderful mentors that were part of that Uniformed Services University. I still keep in touch with one of them, Dr. Welford Roberts. And so mostly army based. So I did rotations for one year.
00:08:57
Speaker
It was fabulous. I did industrial hygiene rotation, which I didn't even know what it was at the time, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. So it was cool to show up on a military base that also had a hospital. Usamrid, which is the infectious disease, the secret lab infectious disease that the Army has,
00:09:23
Speaker
out in Fort Detrick that books were written about and you heard about actually early on with coronavirus. So that was cool. That might have piqued my interest in infectious disease, all the secrets and clearances. Tell us more about that. Do you mind? I don't mind, but honestly, I don't remember most of it because... I mean about the facility and what it does and why it's so
00:09:49
Speaker
intriguing to people. Well, I think there's a lot of pathogenic research that goes on there. It's in a bunker so that if it were to be part of any kind of plot, that research would be safe, that people would be safe. It was just really cool to show up on this base, which was part of, as much as I can remember,
00:10:17
Speaker
Um, my family, I mentioned a big military family also lived really close to Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland. Um, so I had, uh, uncles that were in, in the Marine Corps and, um, just really part of that military family. So I felt like I was getting back to my roots, just being on military bases and the, the, the, the microbes for some reason, I had this ability to see.
00:10:47
Speaker
how they work. They just made sense to me. And since I had done a couple rotations in industrial hygiene, I thought, this might be my sweet spot, kind of microbes and occupational safety.
00:11:04
Speaker
And then I did after that a rotation with the Public Health Service, specifically with the Indian Health Service. And we had one rotation that was for, I think it was for radiation safety at Pine Ridge.
00:11:23
Speaker
Indian reservation. It's Lakota Sioux, Oglaga Sioux in South Dakota, southern South Dakota, right on the Nebraska border. And I was taken aback by the rotation, not because it wasn't wonderful, but because
00:11:43
Speaker
the Indian Health Service physicians and nurses that were there would only do two-year rotations, if that. And it's a very desolate part of the country. If people haven't been on an Indian reservation or a native reservation, I highly, highly, highly recommend seeing
00:12:09
Speaker
what this country is. And, you know, one thing I remember Jill, oh my gosh, the restaurant options on the reservation were, from what I remember, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut.
00:12:27
Speaker
Yeah. Food desert. Yes. No street lights. The largest numbers of fatalities were from people walking just on the main road and getting hit by vehicles. Wow.
00:12:43
Speaker
the the daycare from what I remember it was surrounded by a fence that also had barbed wire and I didn't know at the time if that was for animals or for people or for both but I thought I thought what what a wonderful opportunity to take a fellowship like that to explore things that you never would have
Role at OSHA and Bloodborne Pathogens
00:13:12
Speaker
if you had gone a more traditional route or if I had stuck with taking the MCATs and going to medical school. And right after that rotation, I was plopped into OSHA for six months. So it was six months of rotations with the Army and Indian Health Service and then six months at OSHA. Interesting. So it led me up, I think, to this, I want to serve people. Yeah.
00:13:40
Speaker
all people, I had this passion for keeping people safe at work. And then I had this curiosity about microbes. Interesting. Your worker justice roots were firmly founded in those experiences.
00:14:01
Speaker
they were especially oh the radiation safety course that we did was also hazardous waste related at this hospital so we were training native people at the hospital about health and safety with hazardous waste and infectious waste and
00:14:18
Speaker
So, I mean, man, right, that couldn't have been a better lead-in to plopping me at the national office in Washington, D.C. Right at the time when the blood-borne pathogens experts, so at the national office, as you know, since you've been there, and I've worked for the agency, there are experts in different fields.
00:14:42
Speaker
The bloodborne pathogens expert, the one who wrote the letters of interpretation and who people called, was moving over to a different job. And the lady that led the Office of Health Enforcement, it was called the Office of Health Compliance Assistance back then, was Melody Sands.
00:15:04
Speaker
And I love this woman so much. She was a mentor. She was grounded. She was funny. She used curse words. She was all about women's power. And my mom had left me early. And so she just became this amazing force in my life
00:15:31
Speaker
And to start, she thought, great, what am I going to do with an intern? Like, I don't want to think an intern. I'm going to have to do so much work. She's going to follow me around, and I want to tell her what to do every minute of the day. I had to remind her, I'm not an intern. I'm a fellow. It's a little bit different. But I just fell into it, and I loved it. And so I worked as the bloodborne kind of transitional
00:16:01
Speaker
expert and then at the end of the six months they had a position opened and I interviewed for it and that started my journey as a government industrial hygienist. That's wild. So at this time is where you became the Bloodborne Pathogens Coordinator, the first national like you're talking about, like I explained in the in the opening. Where did that come next?
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, I functioned in that role, answering questions from the field about bloodborne compliance. But then in 2000 is when the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act came out, which was part of adding requirements to the OSHA bloodborne pathogen standard. And I remember over Christmas vacation, it was going from the Clinton administration into the Bush administration.
00:16:59
Speaker
We needed to get that language in the standard ASAP so that the Clinton administration could get credit for it before inauguration in January. So we worked over Christmas to update the standard and then it was just natural. Well, okay, let's say that Amber's the National Bloodborne Pathogens Coordinator then.
00:17:26
Speaker
And so I was. Fabulous. Fabulous. And my gosh, you know, time and place for that. I don't, you know, for people who are listening and are thinking, oh, I didn't even know where the beginning of this was. Can you set kind of the stage of why that all came to be and why it came to pass? I can. One other major coincidence is that
00:17:51
Speaker
Prior to my mother's passing, she was an AIDS nurse for many, many years in New York City. So I had already had experience with what it was like to live among people living and dying with AIDS and HIV transmission. So I was hyper aware of bloodborne pathogens simply because I was a child living with a mom who was a nurse taking care of patients.
00:18:17
Speaker
Um, mostly in those days, which was the late 1980s when she was, um, people died. And, um, she would, she would go out mostly hospice back then, um, take, draw blood, bring it home, um, overnight, keep it in the fridge and wait for a lab core or a quest to pop up and take it from the little box on our stoop every morning. So this was kind of my coming up.
00:18:47
Speaker
It sure was. You were growing up with blood-borne pathogens in your refrigerator. In my fridge, right? I had to move the blood to get to the OJ every morning, you know that kind of thing. At a time when people in the country were absolutely freaked out. Yes. Freaked out about even coming close to a human being who was suffering from AIDS.
00:19:08
Speaker
And that's how, that's how it started was the freak out Ryan white and contaminated blood that was transfused. And yeah, remember the early cases of the dentist in Florida who was transmitting HIV to his patients. Cause he wasn't flushing out his dental lines with air. And all of this was just very intriguing. Mm-hmm.
00:19:31
Speaker
And so the CDC came up with universal precautions back then, turned into standard precautions later. And then OSHA came out with their standard.
00:19:45
Speaker
It was 1991 and then it was enforced, began to be enforced in 1992. There were all kinds of requirements for the use of engineering controls or safer medical devices, sharps containers, lots and lots of training, exposure control plan for employers. The first mandatory vaccine, which was the hepatitis B vaccine for healthcare workers,
00:20:12
Speaker
And technology advanced quicker than OSHA standards do. As is usually the case. Yes, yes. And so in the late 1990s several medical companies had come out with devices that were better for sharps injury prevention like needleless IV systems and
Needlestick Safety Act and Medical Technology
00:20:34
Speaker
syringes that would retract or cover with a sheath. We've seen a lot of those, especially with mass vaccinations for COVID. And then there was a unanimous act that was brought up by a couple of medical device companies and safety advocates, including a member of our board and a global expert in blood-borne pathogens and a nursing leader, Karen Daly. And she, you know,
00:21:03
Speaker
went on the trail talking to members of Congress and so in 1999 and into 2000 the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act was passed unanimously by Congress and it incorporated more of those
00:21:23
Speaker
engineering advancements for medical technology in the standard. And it also was the first standard to have its only, you know, other than the record keeping logs in 1904 CFR 1904, which is the OSHA record keeping standard. The OSHA 300 log for people who aren't familiar with the terminology. Got it. It required people to keep a sharps injury log.
00:21:48
Speaker
on top of all the other requirements for the 300 because the 300 was really about occupational illness, more flu as pestosis, silicosis, that kind of stuff and not really for bloodborne pathogens or infectious disease. So this was a way to add those types of record keeping requirements into the broader record keeping space.
00:22:13
Speaker
Yeah, I remember I was just starting my career with OSHA around the time all of this is passing, you know, you're setting time and place and I was just starting my career and so inspecting healthcare facilities and was part of a team that just focused on healthcare and gosh there was so much education to do at that time and people are like what a separate log for these
00:22:37
Speaker
Yes, and explaining what it all meant and and who does this law apply to and what do we have to do and you know hepatitis? You know the vaccine and can people decline it and oh my gosh. She has so much education
00:22:51
Speaker
Yes, people with safety backgrounds or even industrial hygiene backgrounds or safety so used to a physical hazard and a needle stick is a physical hazard but then it also progresses into what can be a health hazard but industrial hygienists are more chemical and irritant based and so I found my niche in that space because it straddled
00:23:21
Speaker
traditional safety thinking about an acute injury and then traditional industrial hygiene which is more about exposures over time or the transition into an illness and so it felt like the perfect space to be. I didn't realize I'd be in it for so long though.
00:23:42
Speaker
Yeah, so what happened next? So you're at OSHA, things are, you know, you're apparently having a celebration because you got that passed, you got the act passed.
Career Growth and Personal Challenges
00:23:53
Speaker
Yeah, it was incorporated into the standard. We had to do a bunch of training for our compliance officers. And then I loved it. I was a big fish in a little professional pond, meaning content-wise or expertise-wise. OSHA is a huge pond. Yeah, huge pond.
00:24:19
Speaker
And then I got to do a lot of communications with medical device companies who would write in, back then it was letters, would write in letters to say, how does the standard apply to me? If people in hospitals are using these devices, do they need to evaluate new ones? Why? And so I talked to a lot of medical device manufacturers, and wouldn't you know, one of them wanted to recruit me.
00:24:46
Speaker
Wouldn't you know? Wouldn't you know? That's how it works. Here sprouts up another path I didn't expect. And so I went down that path. I went to work for a large medical device company in New Jersey. And they said, Amber, we're going to pay you what you're worth. And I thought, cool. Fantastic. Yeah. Because the government, you know, well, it's good.
00:25:13
Speaker
not so much the pain no and i advanced honestly jill i advanced really quickly i i climbed up the gs ladder every year one rung at a time and i was in a good spot i didn't know what people in the private sector made i never asked right growing up in washington d.c
00:25:33
Speaker
Yeah, you just the GS system is what it is. Yeah, and Amber's talking about the way that the government pays government employees through the system called the GS system. Yeah, been part of it too. Yeah. You're not used to bonuses. And that's right. So I moved to New Jersey as a single girl.
00:25:52
Speaker
Um, and I had a blast. I traveled the world, um, doing bloodborne pathogen training and safety and advocacy and policy work all over the world, conferences. And, um, it was exciting and it was lonely.
00:26:14
Speaker
turning around you know people in my family or friends saying oh my gosh you're going to Stockholm how exciting you need you should spend a couple more days there and but When you're flying in and out and you're by yourself a couple more days alone as a tourist isn't ideal so I found myself after three or four years and
00:26:40
Speaker
thinking I don't know if this is for me it's got to be something more here yeah yeah yeah so what what did the what did the road present to you because it sounds like your career up to this point has been huh look at this this just showed up for me
00:26:58
Speaker
Well, what showed up next was breast cancer. I was diagnosed at age 34. I was living in Baltimore at the time. The company that I worked for had moved me down to open up a Washington DC office and I couldn't really afford a place in DC so I bought a house, a little row house in Baltimore.
00:27:22
Speaker
and commuted down every day on the train, wardrobe. It was a very stressful time. I didn't love my supervisor. I hated the commute. I was still in that corporate environment. And you weren't feeling well. And I was just diagnosed with something that back then, I hadn't heard of anybody in their 30s who had been diagnosed with this kind of disease.
00:27:52
Speaker
so um and is it also what claimed your mother no she actually had a stress-related death and which is why nursing was something that i didn't want to go into she died of a heart attack at the age of 46 that makes sense why you chose what you did yes um and so i
00:28:15
Speaker
I was lucky that I had this guy in my life, not a boyfriend guy, a professional mentor who wanted to explore a different route in the infectious disease space at the time, which was healthcare associated infections.
00:28:31
Speaker
So MRSA was gaining huge popularity, not good popularity, but health care facilities were rampant with C. difficile and MRSA and all of these drug resistant bacteria in patient populations. And he got the buy-in from leadership within this device company to start this whole new
Healthcare-Associated Infections Focus
00:29:00
Speaker
focus area and he asked me to join him. And this was, this was sparking your interest. You had said a while back, like microbes were something you were fascinated with. Yes. And I thought microbes in patient populations. Cool. This is even more interesting to me. Yeah.
00:29:17
Speaker
And there was a location in Baltimore that this company had. And so I thought, shoot, that's an even better commute. I was living in Baltimore, commuting in Baltimore.
00:29:32
Speaker
I was able to find an oncologist that was also in Baltimore. So this was all working out. The company gave me a nice medical leave package so that I could focus on getting well. And then when I was going through chemo, I was home and
00:29:50
Speaker
My friends took care of me and my family took care of me. And when I was doing radiation, which was every day for seven weeks, I would pop over to the hospital, do my radiation, then go up to work. And it worked out great.
00:30:06
Speaker
It really did and the health coverage was wonderful and I ended up reconnecting with a guy who I was a friend of a friend who I had met at a wedding and he called me because he heard that I was going through treatment and
00:30:26
Speaker
I didn't realize at the time that we would end up dating. So I started dating my now husband back then when I was bald and going through radiation. What a guy, huh? What a guy. He just celebrated this week his 50th birthday. And so we're still together. We'll be celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary in two weeks.
00:30:53
Speaker
That's a beautiful story, Amber. It's a beautiful story, but this guy lived in Houston. Oh dang. We got to the point maybe a couple months into our long distance dating that it was clear one person had to move and I honestly was ready to leave the East Coast behind me.
00:31:17
Speaker
It had been a tough couple of years, and so for me it was a no-brainer. Moved in with him, Houston, and then we got married shortly after that.
00:31:32
Speaker
have lived all over the country with my other pathways that have emerged. Yeah. Oh my gosh. What a fun story. So you get to Houston. Do you have a job? Yeah, what happened? So I stayed on with the medical company. They were nice enough to let me remote work, which wasn't really a thing back then.
00:31:56
Speaker
But I had started my doctorate at Johns Hopkins when I was living in Baltimore and I thought, now that I'm here in Houston, I might as well continue to pursue that.
Doctorate and Career in Environmental Health
00:32:12
Speaker
So I just transferred all my records over.
00:32:16
Speaker
I found a great couple of mentors, including Mary Ann Smith, who's at the School of Public Health, Sarah Felchner, George Delclos, this amazing team of people, Larry Whitehead, just these really wonderful people.
00:32:34
Speaker
that brought me in, I got a NIOSH traineeship so to finish my doctorate in environmental occupational health was free to me and they offered me a stipend
00:32:51
Speaker
I had to be a graduate research assistant, of course, and give them my due time. So I was at University of Texas School of Public Health for several years while I finished up my coursework and worked part-time as a graduate research assistant and was settled.
00:33:12
Speaker
in Houston in this life at the Texas Medical Center, which is an amazing place for healthcare until I got a call from a recruiter from another mega medical and pharmaceutical company. Okay. Who had this job opportunity out in California.
00:33:37
Speaker
So I took it, moved out to Orange County, California, and I did professional education in the sterilization and disinfection space. Still sticking with these microbes. Can't shake these microbes. You sure were. Oh my gosh, Amber. That's so interesting. That's so interesting.
00:33:59
Speaker
And also, gosh, we're going to have to have a conversation, you know, not on the podcast about one of my jobs in college, which was sterilizing medical instruments. Oh, yes, Jill, we need that. Which started out by washing them by hand. Yes. Speculums and any woman listening knows what I'm talking about. Yes, and glutaraldehyde. And glutaraldehyde, mm-hmm.
00:34:24
Speaker
Yes, the first time I ever had a colonoscopy, unfortunately, in my very young life, like you, I've had
00:34:33
Speaker
young life, medical issues. I was about to have my first colonoscopy. I'm in my late 20s and a nurse asked me, what do I do for a living? And I tell her, well, I work for OSHA. And she's like, I'm pregnant and I have to use glitter aldehyde every day. Can you tell me about, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? And I'm like, you're about to give me anesthesia. And I said, I'll follow up with you after you wake me up. Yes. Oh, it's such important work, Amber.
00:35:02
Speaker
I just want to give a shout out to sterile processing technicians, people who work in central sterile, endoscopy nurses who are doing their own endoscopes.
00:35:17
Speaker
These people keep hospitals running and patients safe and I just have so much respect for this group of professionals that are underpaid and overlooked and
Regulatory Affairs and Leadership in Safety
00:35:33
Speaker
overworked, physical hazards abundant, hot water, slippery surfaces, caustic chemicals,
00:35:42
Speaker
Um, and a patient would, like you said, you knew better as a patient going under anesthesia about, um, endoscopy and how important it is to keep all of the channels of endoscopes clean, um, for healthcare associated infections. So for me, this was a huge, wonderful learning opportunity. Um, but again,
00:36:06
Speaker
I didn't feel settled in a corporate environment. It was tough for me. I didn't feel like I had the swagger. I didn't drive a BMW. I loved my coworkers. Absolutely loved them. A lot of them, which were nurses, endoscopy nurses or OR nurses, I absolutely loved it.
00:36:32
Speaker
Two of my great friends, Sherry and Barbara, still in that community that I will never, never forget how much I learned in that space. But that corporate environment and loved living in Southern California. Boy, was that beautiful. Living near Laguna Beach was a bit more luxurious than living near Galveston Beach. But, you know, the seabirds are all the same and I'm addicted to seabirds.
00:36:59
Speaker
But you weren't finding your niche in corporate America. I wasn't. And then I meet these two guys who are starting up this textile company, scrub company, and they want me to move to the other Orange County
00:37:18
Speaker
which is Orange County, Florida. So my husband and I, they want me to be the director of regulatory affairs and help them with FDA submission for a new product they have. And so here we go. Pack up the dogs and the RV and go across country one more time to Florida.
00:37:42
Speaker
So we lived just north of Orlando and absolutely loved Central Florida. Great place to live. It's close to my sister, close to a lot of my cousins, and we really enjoyed our time there. And so, my gosh, what a switch. It's a scrub manufacturer, textiles. You've been medical device.
00:38:02
Speaker
way different work environments. Very, very different and I was really excited about it. A nice small office with creative, innovative people who had the nerve to go out and start a company. It was very exciting to me and also the opportunity. I had dealt with the FDA lots
00:38:25
Speaker
especially working in large medical companies, you do. I was excited to learn how to do that part of creating all the research that you need to make a package to submit to the FDA for a safe product. That opportunity was one that I hadn't had. In medical device companies, the regulatory teams are massive.
00:38:53
Speaker
And so this was my chance to do it, to explore it all on my own. I love to learn. And so my husband and I were there for a few years. And one of my long-time mentors, and this was when I worked with her lots at
00:39:13
Speaker
OSHA and she's was key in the Needle Stick Safety and Prevention Act was Janine Jager. She was at the University of Virginia and she ran this organization called the International Healthcare Worker Safety Center. I used her her epinet data, which is sharps injury data to do my doctoral dissertation. Oh, wow. And then you met her.
00:39:36
Speaker
And, well, I met her when I was at OSHA, so I met her way back in the 90s. And she pops up in my life again and says, you know, we're going to take the University of Virginia, I'm no longer interested in keeping this center here.
00:39:58
Speaker
What would you say about taking it on? And my current startup employer thought, this might be a good idea. Branching out, taking on a center, doing more advocacy.
00:40:16
Speaker
I took it on and for a couple months while I was with that employer and then we decided it was best for me to go and run the center full-time and so my husband and I were now
00:40:33
Speaker
both working for ourselves in Florida and loved it but his whole family was in Texas and we thought at this point in our lives we can go wherever we want and so we moved back to the Houston area to be close to friends and back on the water and closer to his family in Dallas and north of Dallas and
00:40:59
Speaker
moved back here in about 2017. And we've been here in the same house since 2017. And do you feel settled? My roots are expanding. It's a little tougher to pluck me out of the earth. Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, I mean, you've been and seen so many things, Amber. It makes sense that this is feeling a little more settled.
00:41:27
Speaker
It is, I think the water also settles me. My nickname is Bird.
00:41:33
Speaker
bird or birdie, my mom called me that since I was a wee one and most of my closest girlfriends call me bird or birdie and Jill, I mean the birds here, the egrets and the herons and the night herons and the seagulls and the pelicans and the osprey, they just speak to me. You found your place.
00:41:58
Speaker
I believe that I have. Yeah. And so your current gig, as we started, is running the International Safety Center, yes?
Nonprofit Challenges and Publication
00:42:10
Speaker
Yes. So tada, we're ended up here at the gigs. The Safety Center is a small nonprofit. Let's just get real about cash. I can't live on it at the way, where it is now.
00:42:27
Speaker
We take contributions from different organizations to keep it going. So a gig life is a high risk, high reward. My time is my own. My health insurance is my own, which is pretty awful. And once the pandemic started, oh, so I had been approached many years ago to write a book.
00:42:55
Speaker
And I wrote a book called Preventing Occupational Exposures to Infectious Disease and Healthcare. Oh my God, it was I didn't know this about you. Okay, so as a pocket guide.
00:43:10
Speaker
meant for somebody who doesn't really know the space that well. They're working in a hospital. They've been thrown into this position for creating maybe their exposure control plan for bloodborne or for infectious disease. And it has chapters on bloodborne infection and bacterial infection, viral infection. I worked with one of my buddies, Rodney Rodi, on the chapters on microorganisms, microbiology,
00:43:40
Speaker
And here comes the COVID pandemic. I'm in the final stages of editing for the book. The 1918 flu is in there, but coronavirus as COVID-19 is not in there. Oh my gosh. Yes. So the publishers, Springer Nature, wanted me to add a chapter on pandemics.
00:44:09
Speaker
Gosh, we don't know very much at this we didn't know very much at this point, right? So are you like we didn't so I had this network of people I had taken on now I had taken on a role with the with NIH with the NIH s they have
00:44:32
Speaker
these programs for worker health and safety. They run grants. Which is where you and I met? Yes, with Chip Hughes. He brought me on to be their infectious disease slash COVID lead.
00:44:49
Speaker
And right, that's where you and I met really early on. Yeah, early 2020. Yeah. And then the book. So at that point, I had found somebody who helped me write the chapter on COVID on pandemic. She's an infection preventionist. And the book comes out. And so now I have this relevant book. I think I made $300 on it last year.
00:45:18
Speaker
It did not bring me the riches. For all the budding authors out there, thanks for the reality check, Amber. Okay. Actually, I think I just saw a deposit for $324 in my bank account. Oh, man. But it's out there and it's wonderful, wonderful experience, long experience. And then, you know, through Facebook, and
00:45:47
Speaker
advertising some of our webinars that we did with the worker training program. I had some of my other OSHA friends, retired OSHA friends, especially a shout out to Dorothy Doherty. She was a big wig at OSHA for a long time and
00:46:04
Speaker
went on to lead a bunch of hired contractors for some COVID work and some other OSHA contract work. And now I continue to work on the OSHA call center has prompt three for COVID and a team of wonderful operators and subject matter experts answer that line every week.
00:46:25
Speaker
we have some other projects going on with the agency so I didn't know that I didn't know that line existed yeah tell the listeners about that yeah well it's a sad story and a wonderful story so
00:46:41
Speaker
Dorothy managed to bring together some of her OSHA friends and other friends and contractors and customer service reps that had lifetime experiences working for telecommunications companies, just this wonderful team of people.
00:46:57
Speaker
With the presidential funds for COVID, part of the emergency response funds, there was money for the agency to create a prompt specifically for COVID. So CDC had one, OSHA has one.
00:47:16
Speaker
If you call 1-800-321-OSHA and press prompt three, that's the team of operators and supervisor subject matter experts that answer the phone. Wow. And we, um, we hear that that contract is ending at the end of June with the public health emergency. Actually, May 11th is a big, sad, we're happy day.
00:47:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean we're we're today is the day may 11th is the day we're recording. So yes, we go on over. Yeah, our public health emergency is over. And that doesn't mean COVID is over, or will be anytime soon. And I am hoping that we
00:48:00
Speaker
have learned the lessons that we've learned and keep them in place for this virus and for whatever's next. And I'm hoping that the agency continues its work on an infectious OSHA, meaning an infectious disease standard, and that they continue to do their wonderful, wonderful work on really leading, they led
00:48:28
Speaker
I would say lead prevention efforts and the concept of aerosolization of COVID very early on as a leading agency. And I'm just so proud of the work that they do and always have done and the work that they will continue to do. So even though this COVID prompt may end,
00:48:47
Speaker
Sometimes soon it doesn't mean that there aren't wonderful people at the agency who respond to infectious disease efforts going on. So what does life look like these days for your career? What gets you excited now?
New Path in Health and Wellness
00:49:04
Speaker
Are there new paths that are opening? Yeah, during the pandemic I got really big into Pilates.
00:49:11
Speaker
And so at, right before I turned 50 last year, I thought,
00:49:20
Speaker
You know, some of the club Pilates organization is so wonderful and friendly and you show up and they're just very, very happy to see you. And one of the general managers said, Amber, you should do our teacher training. I thought, what? I don't know about that. It's 500 hours, Jill, 500 hours. I'm in a 500 hour training right now, a yoga study, not Pilates, but a yoga study. So yes, 500 hours is a big dedication. My partner keeps coming. That was more than my doctorate.
00:49:49
Speaker
Right? My partner keeps calling it yoga graduate school. So you have Pilates graduate school. And to teach Pilates also in another corporate environment, which is Club Pilates, even though they're individually owned as franchises, they want you to make sure everybody is absolutely safe. And so I get it. Learning how to cue the moves in a right way, knowing if people have
00:50:16
Speaker
injuries or pregnancies or anything that we should know about as their instructors. They need to feel safe in our hands. So I totally understand not just the physical journey about getting fitter and more lumber and fascia health and muscle tone and all of that stuff. I get mental health, but it's also the safety factor. So isn't it funny? We're back in the safety business again.
00:50:42
Speaker
Again, and also where you started once you were in DC, in... Yeah, exercise science! Right! There you are!
00:50:53
Speaker
This has nothing to do with getting followed up in a basketball game. No, it doesn't. It's maybe finding something that I'm really, I can't do some of the fancy moves. I was six feet tall, kind of, gravity doesn't like tall people all that much with the fancy stuff. And going back into nutrition, I always had a passion for nutrition and I love doing individual health. Granted, the classes are group, so it's group health, but
00:51:22
Speaker
clients come up to you and tell you very intimate things about health scares they have or relationships or diet or fears or bringing back maybe even the psychology element where I started in college. I just, Jill, I'm ready for just a path. So that was another path that opened and I just have maybe
00:51:49
Speaker
faith in surrendering to what the world shows me. You've certainly proved it. I mean, this is your story. But I don't have an answer for what that is. Maybe I just need to leave myself open. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what's next. I'm surrendering. That is wonderful. That is wonderful. So Amber, as we're getting close to the end of our conversation today,
00:52:20
Speaker
I'm wondering, you know, for our listeners who range from everyone who has more experience than you and I to people who are just starting in their career, and we've been talking and talking about occupational health and public health so much, is there something about that particular practice that you'd like to share with people who are thinking, maybe that's, I don't know, maybe that's something I want to dig into. How do I start? Yeah.
00:52:49
Speaker
I would say, let me start, well, with occupational safety and health, especially having, both of us having been at OSHA, you see horrifying, horrifying things. Horrifying fatalities and hospitalizations and explosions and just awful, awful things.
00:53:14
Speaker
I would say, just like with any clinical practice, you have to let them sink in and drive you, but you can't let them destroy you because you have the opportunity to prevent that from happening again. You may not see the life that you save, potentially like a physician would in a hospital or an emergency department,
00:53:43
Speaker
But you have the opportunity to save an enormous amount of life and lives and the ability even to protect communities of people, whether that is public health or
00:53:58
Speaker
maternal and child health or nutrition or industrial hygiene or occupational safety. I think that safety is universal, the safety of a worker, the safety of a person walking out on the street, the safety of a community. There are no limits to what you can do in a safety field. It just depends what kind of drives your heart.
00:54:21
Speaker
Oh, Amber, this has been phenomenal. I'm so happy to have heard your story. And thank you for sharing it with the audience. I mean, what a wonderful career and contribution you've made to community and people and society.
00:54:39
Speaker
And I've learned so much from you also. So I'm grateful that this accidentally brought us together. And it's just been a wonderful, wonderful conversation. Thanks so much for for keeping this podcast going and for doing what you do. So thank you. Thanks to you and to Emily. You're welcome. You're welcome. Thank you for saying that the podcast incidentally turned five years old yesterday. Happy birthday.
00:55:07
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good. Making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player you'd like. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more professionals like Amber and I.
00:55:37
Speaker
Special thanks to Emily Gould, our podcast producer and until next time, thanks for listening.