208a - Workplace health without borders: its mission, vision and impact from training

Workplace Health Without Borders (WHWB) is an international non-profit focused on Occupational Health/Industrial Hygiene for underserved workers. Our mission is to prevent work-related disease and injury through the sharing of expertise, knowledge, and skills. Sharing our knowledge globally through training was hindered during the pandemic. This presentation outlines how we pivoted to online training, delivered training in three different languages, and found new partners to help us perform occupational health and safety training. We will share the story of the online training process we pioneered that used a combination of asynchronous study with synchronous tutorials. This process allowed the students who normally had full time jobs to study at their own pace, followed by attending weekly tutorials. These tutorials were led by professionals in the field of occupational safety and health from various locations around the world. This presentation will provide lessons learned from evaluations, the impact of the training, how we overcame obstacles and what our plans are for the future. It will also discuss how good partners are essential to this process and most importantly how to focus on what your students need and want.