Department of Environmental and Occupational Health expands into San Antonio and changes Ergo Center name

Like the rest of the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health has seen unprecedented growth in students, faculty and scholarly contributions in recent years. Two recent changes underscore this growth and the department’s outlook for the future: its new presence at Texas A&M University-San Antonio and the renaming of the Ergo Center to the Center for Worker Health beginning Aug. 1.

“Both of these efforts showcase our expansion, and that’s very exciting,” said Mark Benden, PhD, department head and center director.

Three SPH faculty are now co-located at Texas A&M-San Antonio: instructional assistant professor Kaysey Aguilar, DrPH, and assistant professors Garrett Sansom, DrPH, and Lindsay Sansom, PhD.

Back at the flagship location in College Station, Benden and others are pleased that the center will better reflect its comprehensive scope and mission—and the changing nature of how public health officials approach worker health. Benden said that when the center opened in 1996, the field of public health largely saw workers in terms of their time in the workplace, and that has changed significantly.

“When I started my career over 30 years ago, we saw workers in terms of Monday through Friday, 8 to 5 and focused on adding precautions to keep them safer at work,” he said. “Today, we see them holistically—24/7—and not only look at all the factors that might influence their health, but also look at the company’s products: how they’re made, what raw materials are used, the way they get used and the way they get disposed of.”

In addition, center project manager Martha Parker, MS, notes that most people can relate more to the concept of worker health than to ergonomics (which is the study of people in their work environment for the purpose of designing equipment and processes that minimize injury and discomfort).

People ask me what I do, and when I say I’m an ergonomist, they don’t know what to think,” she said. “When I say I help people do their work without hurting themselves, they understand it a little more, but it’s still not crystal clear. Then I explain, and they say, ‘’Oh! I need you to come to my workplace because my back hurts!’ So not only does the name change better reflect the work we have always done, but it will save all of us a lot of time in explaining who we are and how we help people.”

Other changes in the field—notably advances in technology and an increasing focus on interdisciplinary and collaborative work within and across departments at Texas A&M—also have led to the center’s growth and development. While all the center’s experts focus on worker health, not all approach it from an ergonomic perspective, for example, and the center also brings in colleagues from other School of Public Health departments and across campus to tackle sophisticated projects.

“It’s one thing if we discover a new way to keep a worker safe, but it’s a whole different thing if our friends in law and public policy can help us make that become law,” Benden said. “Likewise, we do a lot of work in artificial intelligence with experts from our engineering program. We are fortunate at Texas A&M because we recognize the value that other folks can bring to the table and value interdisciplinary work—and now, we have the chance to model that for our peers throughout the public health profession across the country.”

Benden also anticipates more outreach with industry partners across the state and nation—many of whom are proud former students of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health who want opportunities to work with EOH faculty and to hire Aggie graduates. In addition, Benden and others anticipate an increase in research funding.

“In the past, we focused on smaller grants and local support for industry-sponsored research, which tended to be six months or a year and small, six-figure grants,” he said. “And while we don’t want to give these up, as we build our network of industry contacts and in-house expertise, I think our focus will shift to large, three- to five-year federal grants and larger or grouped industry projects where an entire industry comes together to study all of something instead of just one company wanting research a single aspect.”

All of this will benefit students through the department’s paid jobs, internships with businesses and increasing research opportunities, Benden said. In addition, an online master’s degree targeted at nontraditional students already in the workforce is in the works, as is a new doctoral program to complement the one already in place for practitioners. Although the exact timetable is uncertain, Benden said he is optimistic that the PhD program will be in place at about the same time as the new online master’s degree in public health.

In short, said Parker, “ergonomics is about more than just having a fancy chair. The entire workforce needs us—they just don’t know they need us. And now our name reflects that.”