Helping us stay safe and protected is the Environmental Health & Safety Department, a UW administrative department that assists organizational units in meeting their responsibility to protect the environment and to provide a safe and healthful place for employment and learning. EH&S supports all three UW campuses, all UW medical centers, and all university affiliated operations. To get to know this important partner better, OYPC team had the pleasure of interviewing Ellie Wade, an EH&S Occupational Health and Safety Manager at OYPC works with regularly.
Getting Started & Working with the OYPC
An industrial hygienist by trade, Ellie joined EH&S’s Recreational and Occupational Safety (ROS) group in February 2016. There are six different sections in EH&S that help UW create a safe and healthy environment – Ellie sits in Research Safety, which includes biosafety officers, lab safety services, diving and boating safety and more.
“EHS consists of science-minded professionals who, with a consulting mindset, help our campus stay on the right side of health and safety regulations. We aid the UW community to minimize exposures and accidents that may happen to our workers, students, and volunteers.”
Ellie and her colleague, Judy Cashman, work together to provide health and safety guidance in biological research and animal care and use settings as part of their primary objectives.
Before partnering with OYPC, EH&S held individual consultations with lab groups that wanted high school students to come in for shadowing or research requirements. There are specific legal requirements for youth working in STEM environments, particularly in dealing with hazardous chemicals and equipment, and depending on their age. Ellie shares that navigating this area of youth safety as a non-subject matter expert can be difficult, so EH&S advises UW personnel on what activities youth are allowed to do in those spaces. When met with the task, an outline was created for minors in STEM which was then brought to Caroline here at OYPC to proofread, approve and make sure everything stays up to date and current. The resulting document, Safety Considerations for Youth in STEM Environments, has been an important resource for youth programs.
EH&S staff are often guest speakers or presenters at OYPC-hosted forums – this allows EH&S to create connections with other partners to provide health and safety consultations to our Youth at UW network!
COVID-19 & Youth Safety
Ellie Wade and many others on the EH&S team work hard behind the scenes to stay up to date with the University to help outline all COVID-19 regulations. Thanks to Ellie, Katia Harb, EH&S Senior Director, and the EH&S department, we are able to mitigate challenges with restrictions in order to continue programming and engaging safely with one another.
With the pandemic changing the course of how we view university health and safety protocols at such short notice – how did EH&S respond as efficiently and effectively as they did? Ellie explained that “controlling exposure to infections can be similar to controlling exposure to other hazardous materials”, allowing her and her colleagues to understand and interpret the public health measures needed to keep COVID controlled despite never having experienced a pandemic before.
Prior to the pandemic, the UW’s Advisory Committee on Communicable Disease (facilitated by EH&S) consisted of 10-20 members that met every quarter. It has now turned into a committee of 30-40 members that meets weekly. Since then, the EH&S COVID Response team have worked with ACCD and written extensive guidance and regulatory frameworks for groups that want to come back to the office on UW campuses. Ellie has been the primary EH&S point of contact for OYPC- helping apply these frameworks for youth settings.
Ellie continues to work closely with OYPC to understand and outline the logistics for keeping youth, faculty and volunteers safe.
“How do we provide a safe learning environment for kids on our campus spaces with the Department of Health and COVID safety guidelines in mind? And how do we help programs navigate that independently – each program creating their own COVID-19 Prevention Plans well as implementing them?”
Challenges and Goals
As we navigate the “new normal”, EH&S continues to confidently guide the UW community on the best practices to keep each other healthy. As seamless as the protocol roll-out process may seem, there is still adversity faced by EH&S when taking into account the UW community as a whole. Ellie was clear about what she felt was one of the greatest challenges of her department – increasing visibility of the EH&S department so more people are aware what the requirements and expectations are on health and safety at the UW. Additionally, having to include all pieces of information and detail to reach a broad spectrum of people is challenging. Ellie wants to share with the community that, “we are not the safety police, we are here to help people navigate [these times] and provide consultations to guide you with the right tools throughout the entire process”.
EH&S spends a lot of time improving their outreach and engagement, making sure they reach the right people. EH&S’s strategic goals and objectives are:
“Safety Culture: We foster a healthy and safe culture at UW.
Compliance: We provide a pathway for compliance with regulatory requirements.
Learning and Growth: We promote training, development, and continuous improvement for EH&S staff.
Resources: We align resources with strategic priorities.” (Source)
You can find Ellie and most of the EH&S department on campus in the T-Wing of the Health Sciences Building, and in Hall Health Center. A BIG THANK YOU to Ellie for taking the time out of her busy life to share her stories with all of us as a part of Youth at UW!.
To learn more about and contact EH&S, visit https://www.ehs.washington.edu/