{"id":115549,"date":"2017-11-17T13:32:12","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T18:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/?p=115549"},"modified":"2020-09-17T10:24:23","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T14:24:23","slug":"we-need-to-train-people-differently","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/news\/articles\/2017\/we-need-to-train-people-differently\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We Need to Train People Differently\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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November 17, 2017<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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Kathleen MacVarish Associate Professor of the Practice, Environmental Health<\/span><\/h2><\/p>\n

Breakfast: Special K Protein and a big cup of Starbucks coffee<\/p>\n

Hometown: Baldwin, New York (\u201cThe south shore of Long Island.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Extracurricular: \u201cAll things outdoors\u2014hiking, mountain biking, muddy obstacle course racing, cross-country skiing\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

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You recently received the Robert C. Periello Memorial Award\/Sanitarian of the Year from the Massachusetts Environmental Health Association. What is <\/em>a sanitarian?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Sanitarians include the people who work in state and local health departments looking at air, water, soil, food, solid waste, hazardous waste, that type of thing. A lot of people don\u2019t like the title, because it brings up sanitation and garbage collectors, so while Massachusetts has a board of registration for sanitarians, which I chair, the National Environmental Health Association has the same credential but call it a registered environmental health specialist.<\/p>\n

What led you to become a registered sanitarian?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I started out as a food inspector in Brooklyn. That\u2019s where I became very interested in rats\u2014Harold [Cox<\/a>, director of the Activist Lab] likes to tease me about that, but I actually like pest control.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t even realize that that was public health. My bachelor\u2019s degree is in food science, and I thought of myself as a regulator. Then I moved to California and got a job at the Orange County health department. California is one of the states that requires all of their county health inspectors to be registered sanitarians. That meant I had to learn more about things like housing, drinking water, and waste water. It took a while for me to figure out that regulators were actually part of the whole public health system.<\/p>\n

Why does California require that credential? Does Massachusetts?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Not every state has that requirement\u2014I would say it\u2019s about half and half. In Massachusetts it\u2019s optional: We have a board, but you don\u2019t have to have that credential to work in the health department. What that has actually done is create a training gap, or a training problem.<\/p>\n

For example, for food safety, if you have someone coming in to do your food inspections and they haven\u2019t been trained, how good is the inspection? That\u2019s a pretty complex regulatory area, and the code is as thick as a telephone book. It\u2019s not a simple thing to read or interpret. You really want standardization of inspectors, and the industry actually would like standardized inspectors as well, because it\u2019s hard when you\u2019re a chain and you get one inspection report in one town and a completely different one in another.<\/p>\n

Why don\u2019t all states just make it a requirement?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

If it were mandatory, there\u2019s a cost associated with it. It might also be difficult for some areas to hire registered people, like in western Massachusetts, where they just don\u2019t have that many. How are they going to staff a health department? It\u2019s something I think we need to bite the bullet and do, and maybe we can grandfather in existing people, but it would be a hurdle.<\/p>\n

What brought you to SPH and the Activist Lab?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I was a health inspector for about 20 years, and what I learned over time is that the best way to get people to comply with the regulations is to educate them, and to work with<\/em> them. That\u2019s not how I was trained as a food inspector. We were coming in and saying, \u201cDo this, this, and this,\u201d and if they didn\u2019t they got fined. It was very antagonistic. There was no collaboration.<\/p>\n

As I got more experienced I thought, \u201cWow, I wish I had been trained differently!\u201d How I had been trained wasn\u2019t very effective. I was definitely filling out the forms right and I was finding all the violations, but I wasn\u2019t getting positive change.<\/p>\n

It just made sense to me: We need to train people differently.<\/p>\n

After 20 years of doing inspections, I was ready for a change. By then I had moved to Massachusetts and was working in Milton, and I met Anne [Fidler<\/a>, assistant dean for public health practice]. I called her up one day and I said, \u201cAnne, I can\u2019t do another pigeon complaint investigation!\u201d<\/p>\n

There happened to be an opening at SPH to manage the HRSA-supported New England Public Health Training Center Training Center<\/a>. I started here as a manager of that program, but it really evolved. We got more training grants. I got more interested in the production of training, but always with this idea that we have to train people the right way, that it shouldn\u2019t be an antagonistic relationship with the people being regulated, but a partnership.<\/p>\n

How does your work in the Activist Lab address this training gap?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Because the credential is optional, there\u2019s no standard training program that our environmental health professionals have to go through in Massachusetts in order to do the work. So, what we\u2019ve been able to do here in the Activist Lab is actually come up with a uniform training program so that anyone can get up to a base level of knowledge. It doesn\u2019t necessarily prepare you for the credential, but it prepares you for the work.<\/p>\n

We now have three training centers here at the lab. One is funded by the Department of Public Health for the Massachusetts local workforce, where we took all of the programs areas that all of the boards of health are responsible for and developed an online, self-paced training for each area. They\u2019re available 24\/7, 365, and you don\u2019t have to take a day off from work and travel. You get a certificate completion. You get contact hours, and the contact hours satisfy continuing education for certain types of credentials including sanitarian. They\u2019re also free, so it really is a win-win.<\/p>\n

For the more complex areas like food, onsite waste water, and housing inspections, we took it a step further and have what we call performance-level training. Some of that is online, and some of it is in the classroom and in the field. We have a group of experienced inspectors who volunteer to be field trainers, and they supervise the trainees.<\/p>\n

High-quality training is expensive, but we\u2019ve been fortunate to have these grants. Anne Fidler is actually leading a big charge to try to get our HRSA grant re-funded, because that has really helped support the work that we\u2019re doing with the Department of Public Health.<\/p>\n

Really, we\u2019re trying to come up with a uniform curriculum so people can take what they need, when they need it.<\/p>\n

How do you feel about receiving this award?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

It\u2019s an honor to be nominated by my peers, people I\u2019ve worked with for literally decades, and to know they respect and really appreciate the work. I also have to plug my team here: I get the award, but it\u2019s because of all these people who I have the privilege of working with in the lab and who make it happen.<\/p>\n

\u2014Michelle Samuels<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kathleen MacVarish on being named Sanitarian of the Year, working to close the environmental health skill gap, and how looking for rats in Brooklyn led her to the Activist Lab.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10989,"featured_media":115554,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[2094,2222],"bu-publication":[3516],"sphnews-article-category":[3517,3519,3528,3529,3531,3536,3538,3541],"sphnews-topic":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"profile_tax":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/115549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10989"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115549"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/115549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173680,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/115549\/revisions\/173680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115549"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=115549"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-article-category?post=115549"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-topic?post=115549"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=115549"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=115549"},{"taxonomy":"profile_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_tax?post=115549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}