Courses

This course serves as the key required course for individuals enrolling in the joint UW DEOHS CE/OHWC Total Worker Health® (TWH) Certificate Program. Individuals not seeking the TWH Certificate may enroll and attend this introductory course as a standalone. This course is offered in collaboration with the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center and Portland State University Occupational Health Psychology and Total Worker Health Program.

Learn about the current occupational safety and health research featuring doctorate and master’s program research across Industrial Hygiene. The Northwest Center for Occupational Safety and Health Continuing Education program presents a dynamic webinar series highlighting research discoveries of current Education and Research Center graduate students. 

Each 50-minute live webinar will feature doctorate and master's candidate research Occupational Health Services, Occupational Medicine, and Occupational Health Nursing disciplines. This is an opportunity to hear directly from researchers on relevant, current topics facing workers today. 

Occupational Exposures in Nail Salons - Emerging Insights from an Ongoing Study

Johnny Nguyễn MS, RN, Occupational Health Nursing PhD candidate, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington

Many of us have been in a nail salon, with a technician carefully work over our hands or feet for long periods of time. If you have had a manicure or pedicure, you’ve seen the physical demands of nail salon work up close. This session brings visibility to the hidden risks faced by nail salon workers, using innovative research methods with early findings that can inform more inclusive, effective occupational health strategies. 

Nail salon work reflects the realities of millions of service and frontline jobs, where physical strain and psychosocial stress intersect, this research and finding are relevant to improving worker health, safety, and equity across today’s nail salon workforce.

Johnny Nguyễn will present on evolving lessons from evidence-based methods to characterize psychosocial exposures among nail salon manicurists and participant recruitment for this study. 

Preliminary findings on the musculoskeletal complaints among manicurists in King County, Washington will also be presented. Time will be allotted for questions.

As a health and safety professional, your needs for effectively managing change are complex. You often need to influence others without having positional authority.

Evidence-based models, frameworks, and practical experience come together in a course designed to develop and foster change management practices as a leader, supervisor, and individual. This course will provide frameworks to apply as you navigate through this course and beyond with clients, employees, and organizations that are not ready for or are resistant to change. 

Participants will learn strategies to foster effective change. You'll also build on your network of peers as you share real experiences and challenges. This includes discussions designed to challenge your assumptions and to provide specific ways of thinking that you can employ when addressing real-life interactions.

At this OEM Grand Rounds session, Dr. Stephen Bao, seasoned ergonomist and epidemiologist, will discuss the underlying causes of work-related low back disorders, with a focus on occupations involving heavy lifting. Dr. Bao will review key biomechanical exposures associated with lifting tasks, discuss how these exposures can be quantified, and highlight relevant variables to measure. Participants will gain practical insight into commonly used assessment approaches, interpretation of results, and strategies to reduce injury risk. Case studies and hands-on exercises will be used to reinforce measurement techniques. Participants are encouraged to bring cases from their own practice involving heavy lifting for discussion.

Presenter:

• Stephen Bao, PhD, CPE - Senior Epidemiologist, Washington State Department of Labor and Industries; Affiliate Professor, Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington

People, and how they feel about their work, can have a very significant impact on how they emotionally engage in the workplace each and every day. 

Today’s safety leaders need to understand stress, and emotions in the workplace in order to design a healthy work environment for the 21st century. This course will provide opportunities to examine, explore, and practice positive approaches for increasing individual and group levels of motivation, inclusivity and emotional effectiveness with the ultimate goal of fostering a safe work environment. 

Past participants have shared the importance of learning about psychological capital, hope, efficacy, resiliency and optimism, as a resource in themselves and in others, in order to prepare the people they lead to effectively cope with stress and to effectively manage their emotions. 

Participants will complete an online self-survey to discover what constitutes their positive psychological strengths and potential areas for development.

Accelerating Leadership Development

Safety improves when motivation is strong. 

Motivation influences whether workers follow procedures, raise concerns, and stay engaged when conditions are challenging. When motivation declines, compliance becomes unreliable and accidents become more likely. Motivation does not stand alone, it is shaped by four core capabilities that determine how leaders grow their capacity to lead in complexity.

This course provides practical insight into the theories, capabilities, and motivational drivers that accelerate leadership effectiveness and strengthen safety performance at every level of an organization. 

Past participants include health and safety professionals seeking to improve safety compliance and lead the adoption of rapidly changing workplace requirements. As part of the course, participants complete an online self-survey to examine their motivation and leadership capacity and learn how to activate positive leadership capabilities—referred to as leader developmental readiness.

About the Instructor:

Molly Breysse Cox, MA, PhD, U.W. NW Center for Occupational Health & Safety

Dr. Breysse Cox has over 25 years of change management work experience with Fortune 500 companies. This includes leadership positions in IT, Operations, Customer Service, Product Management, and Marketing. She joined the U.W. Center for Leadership & Strategic Thinking in the Foster School of Business in 2014 as a faculty and leadership associate for undergraduate and graduate. Dr. Breysse Cox has experience in transformational change projects, including designing and deploying new technology, organizational change, and leadership development. Her work is focused on fostering trust and psychological safety in education and the workplace. In addition, she was chosen in 2008 as the recipient of Women in Technology International’s Leadership Award for leadership in support of women in IT.

Transformational Leadership Development

Leadership that drives lasting change goes beyond position and authority, it connects to how people think, feel, and act every day.

This course focuses on the three positive styles of the Full Range Leadership model and the four core components within each style. You will be invited to explore how authentic, transactional, and transformational capabilities influence day-to-day actions, leadership effectiveness, and the impact you have on others.

Through reflection, dialogue, and practical application, you will deepen your awareness of the leadership capabilities that build trust, motivation, and commitment—capabilities essential for creating healthy, safe, and high-performing work environments.

Past participants consistently report that understanding how these leadership styles have strengthened their ability to lead meaningful, positive change across their organizations.

As part of the course, participants will complete a self-assessment to identify leadership strengths and opportunities for growth. This will provide a powerful foundation for developing greater leadership effectiveness in health and safety roles and in the complex, real-world contexts leaders face every day.