Jill James:

This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode is recorded May 11th, 2023. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer. My guest today is Dr. Amber Mitchell. Dr. Mitchell is a bit of a gig Accidental Safety Pro. She has traditional schooling, a master's and doctorate in public health with a focus on occupational health and preventing in exposure to infectious disease. Amber has worked with almost every sector of business, starting with the federal government as an industrial hygienist, and OSHA's very first national Bloodborne Pathogens Coordinator. I can't wait to hear about that. She's also worked in private sector for large medical device companies and for tiny startups. Amber has also worked in academia and for state government in her roles at George Washington University, Binghamton University, and the University of Texas School of Public Health. Today, she runs a nonprofit called the International Safety Center and Gigs in several roles with the federal government, including OSHA and during the pandemic with NIHS, National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences. Like me, Amber also fancy's individual health and wellness. She's a certified Pilates instructor and nutrition fitness specialist. You can find her teaching and practicing at her local Club Pilate Studios. She lives on the water in beautiful Galveston County, Texas, just south of Houston. Welcome to the show, Amber.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Oh, Jill, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited for our conversation today.

Jill James:

Me too. Gosh, I can't wait to dig into so many of these things just in your introduction. But this is the Accidental Safety Pro, so where do you want to start in your story?

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Maybe we start where I realized I didn't want to go.

Jill James:

Absolutely.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

I came up from a family of healthcare providers. My mom was a nurse. My grandmother was a nurse. My grandfather was a doctor. My cousins are nurses or teachers or cops. We have a lot of service providers in my family, which I'm extremely proud of. And I thought I wanted to go to medical school. So, at the college age, I was pre-med with a focus in psychology, thinking psychology is round enough, it's like an English major, you have to do something else with it. But I was right around when my senior year came around, I was deathly afraid and terrible, terrible test taker. Terrible test taker. I had to take pre-calculus four times in college because I couldn't test out of it. And so, I was scared of the MCATs.

Jill James:

Makes sense.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yes. So, while everybody, my classmates were studying for the MCATs, I said, "Ah, I'm going to go do something else." So, I graduated college and I went to live with my friends who hadn't graduated college yet, up in a tiny little lake town called Oswego, New York, right on Lake Ontario. And I waited tables. I was really good at bartending and really good at waiting tables. So, I decided... My mom had passed away when I was a junior in college. So, I was on my own and I really was a bit lost. So, I decided to move back home to her hometown, Washington, DC and I bartended some more. And I started a program at George Washington University for what was then Exercise Science.

Jill James:

Okay.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

I thought I wanted to do PT or Exercise Science, something involving fit and fabulous people. And that year, I realized I was a year into the Exercise Science masters that most people wanted to be coaches or continued to train athletes, and I was not athletic. I fouled out of every single basketball game I played in high school. I couldn't run, I couldn't hit a ball for anything. So...

Jill James:

But you wanted to be fit and well, I get why you're attracted to that. That makes sense.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

So, then that year, the School of Public Health opened at GW, and it was part, get this, Jill, it was part of the medical school. I am going... If I step foot in the medical school, technically I am a medical school student.

Jill James:

There you go.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

The School of Public Health hadn't yet had an official building or anything like that. So, I started my Master's in Public Health and worked while I did it. And that's how I ended up getting into public health was realizing I didn't have what it took to take the MCATs and wouldn't you know luck would have it that I stepped foot into the medical school for my advanced schooling anyway, so I had made it.

Jill James:

That sounds like destiny. And anyone who's an apprehensive test taker understands this completely. And thanks for the vulnerability in sharing that. I shared that too. Yeah, so here you are, public health, what did you think it was?

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

I thought it was what I did, which was the concentration in health promotion and disease prevention. So, I thought, okay, well, if I don't train athletes and I didn't want to do mostly Exercise Science, people do a lot of cardiac rehab. I knew I liked the sense of broader health, so programmatic health versus individual health that a doctor might provide. I mean, a physician might provide.

Jill James:

Sure.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

I knew I didn't want to go into nursing because I had seen what it had done to my mom, incredibly stressful profession. And my grandparents had passed at this time. They both died when I was 16. So, I was still a bit unrooted. And so, I finished my master's degree, paid for it all by myself.

Jill James:

With all of that wonderful experience bartending?

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yeah, bartending was the best escape, the best networking, the best way to fit into a community. And so, I love that part of it. And then, there was an opening for a postgraduate fellowship, and I thought, "Sweet, I can postpone figuring out what I want to do for another year," not realizing that that year would set the tone for the rest of my Accidental Safety Pro journeys.

Jill James:

So, what happened?

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

That fellowship was one of my professors, Kathy Hunting. She had this availability. It was for a fellowship with the Uniform Services University, which is in Bethesda, Maryland. It sits on the campus with the Naval Hospital. And honestly, Jill, I had thought about joining the military my whole life. I come from a big military family, and I thought this is a path that I need to explore while being a civilian. So, they had opened up this program, postgraduate fellowship in Environmental Health. And I thought, again, this is life leading me down a path that I had thought I wanted to explore and didn't know it. And I was young and honestly, really excited to be around a lot of military boys, let's say.

Jill James:

That makes sense.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yeah, and I had two absolutely wonderful mentors that were part of that Uniformed Services University. I still keep in touch with one of them, Dr. Welford Roberts. And so, mostly army based. So, I did rotations for one year. It was fabulous. I did industrial hygiene rotation, which I didn't even know what it was at that time, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. So, it was cool to show up on a military base, and also at a hospital. USAMRIID, which is the infectious disease, the secret lab infectious disease that the army has out in Fort Dietrich, that books were written about, and you heard about actually early on with coronavirus. So, that was cool. That might have piqued my interest in infectious disease, all the secrets and clearances.

Jill James:

Tell us more about that. Do you mind?

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

I don't mind. But honestly, I don't remember most of it because...

Jill James:

I mean, about the facility and what it does and why it's so intriguing to people.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

I think are a lot of... There's a lot of pathogenic research that goes on there. It's in a bunker, so that if it were to be part of any kind of plot, that research would be safe, that people would be safe. It was just really cool to show up on this base, which was part of, as much as I can remember, it was my family. I mentioned a big military family, also lived really close to Fort Dietrich in Frederick, Maryland. So, I had uncles that were in the Marine Corps, and just really part of that military family. So, I felt like I was getting back to my roots just being on military bases. And...

Jill James:

Gosh, right.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

... the microbes, for some reason, I had this ability to see how they work. They just made sense to me. And since I had done a couple of rotations in industrial hygiene, I thought, "This might be my sweet spot kind of microbes and occupational safety." And then, I did after that a rotation with the public health service, specifically with the Indian Health Service. And we had one rotation that was for, I think it was for radiation safety at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It's Lakota Sioux, Oglala Sioux in South Dakota, Southern South Dakota on the Nebraska border. And I was taken aback by the rotation, not because it wasn't wonderful, but because the Indian Health Service physicians and nurses that were there would only do two-year rotations if that. And it's a very desolate part of the country. If people haven't been on an Indian reservation or a native reservation, I highly, highly, highly recommend seeing what this country is. And one thing I remember, Jill, oh, my gosh, the restaurant options on the reservation were, from what I remember, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut and...

Jill James:

Food desert.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yes, and no street lights. And so, the largest numbers of fatalities were from people walking just on the main road and getting hit by vehicles. The daycare, from what I remember, it was surrounded by a fence that also had barbed wire. And I didn't know at that time if that was for animals or for people or for both. But I thought, what a wonderful opportunity to take a fellowship like that, to explore things that you never would've if you had gone a more traditional route or if I had stuck with taking the MCATs and going to medical school. And right after that rotation, I was plopped into OSHA for six months. So, it was six months of rotations with the army and Indian Health Service, and then six months at OSHA.

Jill James:

Interesting.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

So, it led me up, I think, to this, I want to serve people, all people. I had this passion for keeping people safe at work. And then, I had this curiosity about microbes.

Jill James:

Interesting. Your worker justice roots were firmly founded in those experiences.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

They were especially, oh, the radiation safety course that we did was also a hazardous waste related at this hospital. So, we were training native people at the hospital about health and safety with hazardous waste and infectious waste. And so, I mean, man, that couldn't have been a better lead into plopping me at the National Office in Washington, D.C. right at that time when the bloodborne pathogens experts. So, the National Office as you know, since you've been there and have worked for the agency, they're experts in different fields. And the bloodborne pathogens expert, the one who wrote the letters of interpretation and who people called was moving over to a different job. And the lady that led the Office of Health Enforcement, it was called the Office of Health Compliance Assistance back then was Melody Sands. And I love this woman so much. She was a mentor. She was grounded. She was funny. She used curse words. She was all about women's power. And my mom had left me early. And so, she just became this amazing force in my life. And to start, she thought, "Great, what am I going to do with an intern? I don't want to just think an intern."

Jill James:

I'm going to have to do so much work. She's going to follow me around and I'm to tell her what to do every minute of the day.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

I had to remind her, "I'm not an intern, I'm a fellow. It's a little bit different." But I just fell into it and I loved it. And so, I worked as the bloodborne transitional expert. And then, at the end of the six months, they had a position opened and I interviewed for it. And that started my journey as a government industrial hygienist.

Jill James:

That's wild. So, at this time is where you became the Bloodborne Pathogens Coordinator, the first national you're talking about, like I explained in the opening, or did that come next?

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yeah, I functioned in that role answering questions from the field about bloodborne compliance. But then, in 2000 is when the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act came out, which was part of adding requirements to the OSHA Bloodborne Pathogen Standard. And I remember over Christmas vacation, it was going from the Clinton administration, into the Bush administration, we needed to get that language in the standard ASAP, so that the Clinton administration could get credit for it before inauguration in January. So, we worked over Christmas to update the standard, and then it was just natural. Well, okay, let's say that Amber's the National Bloodborne Pathogens Coordinator then. And so, I was.

Jill James:

Fabulous. Fabulous. And my gosh, time and place for that... For people who are listening and are thinking, "Oh, I didn't even know where the beginning of this was." Can you set the stage of why that all came to be and why it came to pass?

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

I can. One other major coincidence is that prior to my mother's passing, she was an AIDS nurse for many, many years in New York City. So, I had already had experience with what it was like to live among people living and dying with AIDS and HIV transmission. So, I was hyper aware of bloodborne pathogens simply because I was a child living with a mom who was a nurse taking care of patients mostly in those days, which was the late 1980s when she was, people died. And she would go out, mostly hospice back then, take draw blood, bring it home overnight, keep it in the fridge, and wait for a lab corps, request to pop up and take it from the little box on our stoop every morning. So, this was my coming up.

Jill James:

It sure was. You were growing up with bloodborne pathogens in your refrigerator.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

In my fridge, right. I had to move the blood to get to the OJ every morning, that kind of thing.

Jill James:

And at that time, when people in the country were absolutely freaked out.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yes.

Jill James:

Freaked out about even coming close to a human being who had, was suffering from AIDS.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

And that's how it started, was the freak out. Ryan White and contaminated blood that was transfused. And remember the early cases of the dentist in Florida who was transmitting HIV to his patients because he wasn't flushing out his dental lines with air. And all of this was just very intriguing. And so, the CDC came up with universal precautions back then, turned into standard precautions later. And then, OSHA came out with their standard, it was 1991, and then it was enforced, began to be enforced in 1992. There were all kinds of requirements for the use of engineering controls or safer medical devices, sharps, containers, lots and lots of training, exposure control plan for employers. The first mandatory vaccine, which was the Hepatitis B vaccine for healthcare workers.

Jill James:

That's right.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

And technology advanced quicker than OSHA standards do.

Jill James:

As is usually the case.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yes, yes. And so, in the late 1990s, several medical companies had come out with devices that were better for sharp's injury prevention, like needleless IV systems and syringes that would retract or cover with a sheath. We've seen a lot of those, especially with mass vaccinations for COVID. And then, there was a unanimous act that was brought up by a couple of medical device companies and safety advocates, including a member of our board and a global expert in bloodborne pathogens and a nursing leader, Karen Daley. And she went on the trail talking to members of Congress. And so, in 1999 and into 2000, the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act was passed unanimously by Congress, and it incorporated more of those engineering advancements for medical technology in the standard. And it also was the first standard to have, its only other than the record keeping logs in 1904, CFR 1904, which is the OSHA record keeping standard.

Jill James:

The OSHA 300 log for people who aren't familiar with the terminology.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

You got it. It required people to keep a sharps injury log on top of all the other requirements for the 300, because the 300 was really about occupational illness, more flu as ptosis, silicosis, that kind of stuff, and not really for bloodborne pathogens or infectious disease. So, this was a way to add those types of record keeping requirements into the broader record keeping space.

Jill James:

Yeah, I remember I was just starting my career with OSHA around the time all of this is passing. You're setting time and place, and I was just starting my career. And so, in inspecting healthcare facilities and was part of a team that just focused on healthcare. And gosh, there was so much education to do at that time. And people are like, "What? A separate log for these?"

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yeah.

Jill James:

And explaining what it all meant and who does this law apply to and what do we have to do and hepatitis the vaccine and can people decline it? And, oh my gosh, yeah, so much education.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yes, yeah, people with safety backgrounds or even industrial hygiene backgrounds or safety. So, I used to a physical hazard and a needlestick is a physical hazard, but then it also progresses into what can be a health hazard. But industrial hygienists are more chemical and irritant based. And so, I found my niche in that space because it straddled traditional safety, thinking about an acute injury. And then, traditional industrial hygiene, which is more about exposures over time or the transition into an illness. And so, it felt like the perfect space to be. I didn't realize I'd be in it for so long though.

Jill James:

Yeah. So, what happened next? So, you're at OSHA, things are... You're apparently having a celebration because you got that passed, you got the act passed.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yeah, it was incorporated into the standard. We had to do a bunch of training for our compliance officers. And then, I loved it. I was a big fish in a little professional pond. Meaning, content wise or expertise wise. OSHA is a huge pond.

Jill James:

Yeah, huge pond.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

And then, I got to do a lot of communications with medical device companies who would write in, back then it was letters would write in letters to say, "How does this standard apply to me? If people in hospitals are using these devices, do they need to evaluate new ones? Why?" And so, I talked to a lot of medical device manufacturers. And wouldn't you know, one of them wanted to recruit me.

Jill James:

Wouldn't you know.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Wouldn't you know.

Jill James:

That's how it works.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Here, sprouts up another path I didn't expect. And so, I went down that path. I went to work for a large medical device company in New Jersey, and they said, "Amber, we're going to pay you what you're worth." And I thought, "Cool."

Jill James:

Fantastic.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Because the government, well, it's good, but not so much the pay.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

No. And I advanced, honestly, Jill, I advanced really quickly. I climbed up the GS ladder every year, one rung at a time, and I was in a good spot. I didn't know what people in the private sector made. I never asked. Growing up in Washington, DC, the JS system is what it is.

Jill James:

Yeah, and Amber is talking about the way that the government pays government employees through the... It's a system called the JS system. Yeah, been part of it too, yeah.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

You're not used to bonuses. And...

Jill James:

That's right.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

So, I moved to New Jersey as a single girl, and I had a blast. I traveled the world doing bloodborne pathogen training and safety and advocacy and policy work all over the world, conferences. And it was exciting, and it was lonely. Turning around, people in my family or friends saying, "Oh, my gosh, you're going to Stockholm, how exciting. You should spend a couple more days there." But when you're flying in and out and you're by yourself, a couple more days alone as a tourist isn't ideal. So, I found myself after three or four years thinking, "I don't know if this is for me."

Jill James:

It's got to be something more here.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Yeah, yeah. So, what did the road present to you? Because it sounds like your career up to this point has been, "Huh, look at this. This just showed up for me."

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

What showed up next was breast cancer. I was diagnosed at age 34. I was living in Baltimore at that time. The company that I worked for had moved me down to open up a Washington, DC office. And I couldn't really afford a place in DC. So, I bought a house, a little row house in Baltimore and commuted down every day on the train or drove. It was a very stressful time. I didn't love my supervisor. I hated to commute. I was still in that corporate environment.

Jill James:

And you weren't feeling well.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

And I was just diagnosed with something that back then, I hadn't heard of anybody in their 30s who had been diagnosed with this kind of disease. So...

Jill James:

And is it also what claimed your mother?

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

No, she actually had a stress related death, and which is why nursing was something that I didn't want to go into. She died of a heart attack at the age of 46.

Jill James:

That makes sense why you chose what you did.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yes. And so, I was lucky that I had this guy in my life, not a boyfriend guy, a professional mentor who wanted to explore a different route in the infectious disease space at that time, which was healthcare associated infections. So, MRSA was gaining huge popularity, not good popularity, but healthcare facilities were rampant with C. difficile and MRSA, and all of these drug-resistant bacteria and patient populations. And he got the buy-in from leadership within this device company to start this whole new focus area. And he asked me to join them.

Jill James:

And this was sparking your interest. You had said a while back, like microbes were something you were fascinated with.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yes. And I thought, "Microbes in patient populations. Cool. This is even more interesting to me." And there was a location in Baltimore that this company had. And so, I thought, "Shoot, that's an even better commute." Just I was living in Baltimore, commuting in Baltimore, and I was able to find an oncologist that was also in Baltimore. So, this was all working out. The company gave me nice medical leave package, so that I could focus on getting well. And then, when I was going through chemo, I was home and my friends took care of me, and my family took care of me. And when I was doing radiation, which was every day for seven weeks, I would pop over to the hospital, do my radiation, then go up to work. And it worked out great. It really did. And the health coverage was wonderful. And I ended up reconnecting with a guy who I was a friend of a friend, who I had met at a wedding. And he called me because he heard that I was going through treatment, and I didn't realize at that time that we would end up dating. So, I started dating my now husband, back then when I was bald and going through radiation. What a guy, huh?

Jill James:

Yeah, what a guy.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

He is. He just celebrated this week, his 50th birthday. And so, we're still together. We'll be celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary in two weeks. And...

Jill James:

That's a beautiful story, Amber.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

It's a beautiful story. But this guy lived in Houston.

Jill James:

Oh, dang.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

We got to the point, maybe a couple of months into our long-distance dating that it was clear, one person had to move. And I honestly, was ready to leave the East Coast behind me. It had been...

Jill James:

New chapter.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yeah, it's been a tough couple of years. And so, for me, it was a no-brainer. Moved in with him, Houston. And then, we got married shortly after that, and have lived all over the country with my other pathways that have emerged.

Jill James:

Yeah, oh my gosh, what a fun story. So, you get to Houston, do you have a job or what did you do? Yeah, what happened?

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

So, I stayed on with the medical company. They were nice enough to let me remote work, which wasn't really a thing back then. But I had started my doctorate at Johns Hopkins when I was living in Baltimore. And I thought, "Now that I'm here in Houston, I might as well continue to pursue that." So, I just transferred all my records over. I found a great couple of mentors, including Mary Ann Smith, who's at the School of Public Health, Sarah Feltner, George Delclos, amazing team of people, Larry Whitehead, just these really wonderful people that brought me in. I got a NIOSH traineeship. So, to finish my doctorate in Environmental Occupational Health was free to me. And they offered me a stipend. I had to be a graduate research assistant, of course, and give them my due time. So, I was at University of Texas School of Public Health for several years while I finished up my coursework and worked part-time as a graduate research assistant and was settled in Houston in this life at the Texas Medical Center, which is an amazing place for healthcare. Until I got a call from a recruiter from another mega medical and pharmaceutical company, who had this job opportunity out in California. So, I took it. We moved out to Orange County, California, and I did professional education in the sterilization and disinfection space, still sticking with these microbes. I can't shake these microbes.

Jill James:

You sure were. Oh, my gosh, Amber. That's so interesting. That's so interesting. And also, gosh, we're going to have to have a conversation, not on the podcast, about one of my jobs in college, which was sterilizing medical instruments.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Oh, yes, Jill. We need that.

Jill James:

Which started out by washing them by hand.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yes.

Jill James:

Speculums. And any woman listening knows what I'm talking about.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yes, and glutaraldehyde.

Jill James:

And glutaraldehyde. Yes, the first time I ever had a colonoscopy, unfortunately in my very young life like you, I've had young life medical issues. I was about to have my first colonoscopy. I'm in my late 20s, and a nurse asked me, what do I do for a living? And I tell her, "Well, I work for OSHA." And she's like, "I'm pregnant and I have to use glutaraldehyde every day. Can you tell me about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?" And I'm like, "You're about to give me anesthesia." And I said, "I'll follow up with you after you wake me up."

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yes.

Jill James:

Oh, it's such important work, Amber. Okay, so please.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

It is. And I just want to give a shout-out to sterile processing technicians, people who work in central sterile, endoscopy nurses who are doing their own endoscopes. These people keep hospitals running and patients safe. And I just have so much respect for this group of professionals that are underpaid and overlooked and overworked, physical hazards, abundant hot water, slippery surfaces, caustic chemicals. And a patient would, like you said, you knew better as a patient going under anesthesia about endoscopy and how important it is to keep all of the channels of endoscopes clean for healthcare associated infections. So, for me, this was a huge, wonderful learning opportunity. But again, I didn't feel settled in a corporate environment. It was tough for me. I didn't feel like I had the swagger. I didn't drive a BMW. I loved my coworkers, absolutely loved them. A lot of them, which were nurses, endoscopy nurses or OR nurses. I absolutely loved it. Two of great friends, Sherry and Barbara are still in that community that I will never, never forget how much I learned in that space. But that corporate environment, and loved living in Southern California. Boy, it was that beautiful. Living near Laguna Beach was a bit more luxurious than living near Galveston Beach. But the seabirds are all the same. And I'm addicted to seabirds.

Jill James:

But you weren't finding your niche in corporate America.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

I wasn't. And then, I meet these two guys who are starting up this textile company, scrub company, and they want me to move to the other Orange County, which is Orange County, Florida. So, my husband and I, they want me to be the director of regulatory affairs and help them with FDA submission for a new product they have. And so, here we go, pack up the...

Jill James:

Let's switch, let's switch.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Pack up the dogs in the RV, and go across country one more time to Florida. So, we lived just North of Orlando. And absolutely, loved central Florida. Great place to live. It was close to my sister, close to a lot of my cousins, and we really enjoyed our time there.

Jill James:

And so, my gosh, what a switch. So, a scrub manufacturer, textiles, you've been medical device way different work environments, way different.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Very, very different. And I was really excited about it. A nice small office with creative, innovative people who had the nerve to go out and start a company. It was very exciting to me. And also, the opportunity I had dealt with the FDA lots, especially working in large medical companies. You do. I was excited to learn how to do that part of creating all the research that you need to make a package to submit to the FDA for a safe product. That opportunity was one that I hadn't had. In medical device companies, the regulatory teams are massive. And so, this was my chance to do it, to explore it all on my own. I love to learn. And so, my husband and I were there for a few years. And one of my longtime mentors, and this was when I worked with her lots at OSHA, and she's key in the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act, was Janine Jager. She was at the University of Virginia, and she ran this organization called the International Healthcare Worker Safety Center. I used her EPINet data, which is Sharp's Injury data, to do my doctoral dissertation.

Jill James:

Wow. And then, you met her?

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

I met her when I was at OSHA. So, I met her way back in the '90s. And she pops up in my life again and says, "We're going to take this University of Virginia's... I'm no longer interested in keeping this center here. And what would you say about taking it on?" And my current startup employer thought this might be a good idea, branching out, taking on a center, doing more advocacy. So, I took it on, and for a couple of months while I was with that employer, and then we decided it was best for me to go and run the center full time. And so, my husband and I were now both working for ourselves in Florida and loved it. But his whole family was in Texas. And we thought, at this point in our lives, we can go wherever we want. And so, we moved back to the Houston area to be close to friends and back on the water and closer to his family in Dallas and north of Dallas, and moved back here about 2017. And we've been here in the same house since 2017.

Jill James:

And do you feel settled?

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

My roots are expanding. It's a little tougher to pluck me out of the earth.

Jill James:

Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yeah.

Jill James:

I mean, you've been and seen so many things, Amber. It makes sense that this is feeling a little more settled.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

It is. I think the water also settles me. My nickname is Bird, Bird or Birdie. My mom called me that since I was a Wee1. And most of my closest girlfriends call me Bird or Birdie and Jill. I mean, the birds here, ugh. The Egrets and the Herons and the night herons and the seagulls and the Pelicans and the Osprey, they just speak to me.

Jill James:

You found your place.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

I believe that I have.

Jill James:

Yeah. And so, your current gig as we started all time, is running the International Safety Center? Yes?

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yes. So, ta-da, we're ended up here at the gigs. The Safety Center is a small nonprofit. Let's just get real about cash. I can't live on it at the way where it is now. We take contributions from different organizations to keep it going. So, a gig life is high-risk, high reward. My time is my own. My health insurance is my own, which is pretty awful. And once the pandemic started, oh, so I had been approached many years ago to write a book. And I wrote a book called Preventing Occupational Exposures to Infectious Disease and Healthcare.

Jill James:

Oh, my gosh. I didn't know this about you. Okay.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yeah. So, as a pocket guide, meant for somebody who doesn't really know the space that well, they're working in a hospital. They've been thrown into this position for creating maybe their exposure control plan for bloodborne or for infectious disease. And it has chapters on bloodborne infection and bacterial infection, viral infection. I worked with one of my buddies, Rodney Rohde, on the chapters on microorganisms' microbiology. And here comes the COVID pandemic. I'm in the final stages of editing for the book. The 1918 flu is in there, but coronavirus says COVID-19 is not in there.

Jill James:

Oh, my gosh.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yes. So, the publishers, Springer Nature wanted me to add a chapter on pandemics.

Jill James:

And gosh, we don't know very much at this. We didn't know very much at this point, right? So, you were like, "What do I do?" Yeah.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

We didn't. So, I had this network of people. I had taken on now. I had taken on a role with the NIH, with the NIEHS. They have these programs for worker health and safety. They run grants and...

Jill James:

Which is where you and I met.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yes, with Chief Hughes. He brought me on to be their Infectious Disease/COVID lead. And right, that's where you and I met really early on.

Jill James:

Yeah, early 2020.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yup. And then, the book, so at that point, I had found somebody who helped me write the chapter on COVID, on pandemic. She's an infection preventionist. And the book comes out. And so, now I have this relevant book. I think I made $300 on it last year. It did not bring me the riches.

Jill James:

But for all the budding authors out there, thanks for the reality check, Amber. Okay.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Actually, I think I just saw a deposit for $324 in my bank account.

Jill James:

Oh, man.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

But it's out there and it's wonderful, wonderful experience, long experience. And then, through Facebook and advertising some of our webinars that we did with the worker training program, I had some of my other OSHA friends, retired OSHA friends especially shout out to Dorothy Dougherty. She was a big wig at OSHA for a long time, and went on to lead a bunch of hired contractors for some COVID work and some other OSHA contract work. And now, I continue to work on the OSHA call center has prompt three for COVID, and a team of wonderful operators and subject matter experts answer that line every week. And we have some other projects going on with the agency. So...

Jill James:

I didn't know that line existed, Amber.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yes.

Jill James:

Tell the listeners about that. Yeah, talk about that just a little bit.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

It's a sad story and a wonderful story. So, Dorothy managed to bring together some of her OSHA friends and other friends and contractors and customer service reps that had lifetime experiences working for telecommunications companies. Just this wonderful team of people with the presidential funds for COVID, part of the emergency response funds. There was money for the agency to create a prompt specifically for COVID. So, CDC had one, OSHA has one. If you call 1-800-321-OSHA and press prompt three, that's the team of operators and supervisor subject matter experts that answer the phone.

Jill James:

Whoa.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

And we hear that that contract is ending at the end of June with the Public Health Emergency actually, May 11th is a big sad... We're happy day.

Jill James:

Yeah. I mean, today is the day, May 11th is the day we're recording. So, yes, we've... Go on Amber.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yeah, our Public Health Emergency is over. That doesn't mean COVID is over or will be anytime soon. And I'm hoping that we have learned the lessons that we've learned and keep them in place for this virus and for whatever's next. And I'm hoping that the agency continues its work on an infectious OSHA, meaning an infectious disease standard. And that they continue to do their wonderful, wonderful work on really leading. They led, I would say, led prevention efforts and the concept of aerosolization of COVID very early on as a leading agency. And I'm just so proud of the work that they do and always have done and the work that they will continue to do. So, even though this COVID prompt may end sometime soon, it doesn't mean that there aren't wonderful people at the agency who respond to infectious disease efforts going on.

Jill James:

So, what does life look like these days for your career? What gets you excited now? Are there new paths that are opening?

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yeah. During the pandemic, I got really big into pilates. And so, right before I turned 50 last year, I thought some of the Club Pilates organization's so wonderful and friendly, and you show up, and they're just very, very happy to see you. And one of the general managers said, Amber, you should do our teacher training. I thought, "Oh, what? I don't know about that." It's 500 hours, Jill, 500 hours.

Jill James:

I'm in a 500-hour training right now. A yoga study, not pilates, but a yoga study. So, yes, 500 hours is a big dedication. My partner keeps...

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

That was more than my doctorate.

Jill James:

My partner keeps calling it yoga graduate school. So, you had pilates graduate school, yeah.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

And to teach Pilates also in another corporate environment, which is Club Pilates. Even though they're individually owned as franchises it, they want you to make sure everybody is absolutely safe. And so, I get it. Learning how to cue the moves in a right way, knowing if people have injuries or pregnancies or anything that we should know about as their instructors, they need to feel safe in our hands. So, I totally understand, not just the physical journey about getting fitter and more lumber and fascia health and muscle tone and all of that stuff. I get mental health, but it's also the safety factor. So, isn't it funny we're back in the safety business again?

Jill James:

Again. And also, where you started once you were in DC in...

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yeah, Exercise Science.

Jill James:

Right. There you are. This has nothing to do with getting fouled out in a basketball game.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

No, it doesn't. And maybe, finding something that I'm really... I can't do some of the fancy moves. I was 6 feet tall, gravity doesn't like tall people all that much with the fancy stuff. And going back into nutrition, I always had a passion for nutrition, and I love doing individual health. Granted, the classes are group, so it's group health. But clients come up to you and tell you very intimate things about health scares they have or relationships or diet or fears or bringing back maybe even the psychology element where I started in college. Jill, I'm ready for just a path. So, that was another path that opened. And I just have maybe faith and surrendering to what the world shows me.

Jill James:

You've certainly proved it. I mean, this is your story.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

But I don't have an answer for what that is. Maybe, I just need to leave myself open.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Yup. So, that's what's next. I'm surrendering.

Jill James:

That is wonderful. That is wonderful. So, Amber, as we're getting close to the end of our conversation today, I'm wondering for our listeners who range from everyone who has more experience than you and I, to people who are just starting in their career, and we've been talking and talking about occupational health and public health so much, is there something about that particular practice that you'd like to share with people who are thinking, "Maybe that's... I don't know, maybe that's something I want to dig into. How do I start?"

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

I would say, let me start, well, with occupational safety and health, especially having both of us having been at OSHA, you see horrifying, horrifying things.

Jill James:

That's right.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Horrifying fatalities and hospitalizations and explosions and just awful, awful things. And I would say, you just like with any clinical practice or you have to let them sink in and drive you, but you can't let them destroy you because you have the opportunity to prevent that from happening again.

Jill James:

That's right.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

You may not see the life that you save potentially like a physician would in a hospital or an emergency department, but you have the opportunity to save an enormous amount of life and lives. And the ability even to protect communities of people, whether that is public health or maternal and child health or nutrition or industrial hygiene or occupational safety. I think that safety is universal. The safety of a worker, the safety of a person walking out on the street, the safety of a community. There are no limits to what you can do in a safety field. It just depends what kind of drives your heart.

Jill James:

Oh, Amber, this has been phenomenal. I'm so happy to have heard your story. And thank you for sharing it with the audience. I mean, what a wonderful career and contribution you've made to community and people and society.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

And I've learned so much from you also. So, I'm grateful that this accidentally brought us together, and it's just been a wonderful, wonderful conversation. Thanks so much for keeping this podcast going and for doing what you do. So, thank you. Thanks to you and to Emily.

Jill James:

You're welcome. You're welcome. Thank you for saying that. The podcast incidentally turned five years old yesterday.

Dr. Amber Mitchell:

Happy birthday.

Jill James:

Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you all for spending your time, listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good, making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player you'd like. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more professionals like Amber and I. Special thanks to Emily Gould, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.