128: Resilience, Repair, and Finding Balance

Jill James:

This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded May 23rd, 2025. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer. And this is the seventh anniversary of the podcast. Seven years ago, in the month of May, this show began. And I am honored to share the stories, experiences, and expertise from each guest with this listening audience. So thank you all for being here all these years and counting. My guest, this anniversary episode is my friend, Chip Hughes. Chip is a Worker Justice titan, I really mean that, and you'll hear why in just a second. If his name sounds familiar to you, maybe you remember hearing him on episode 54, back in 2020. Chip pioneered efforts to create new methods for conducting needs assessments, reaching underserved populations, developing training partnerships, and creating innovative program evaluation measures.

Jill James:

He began his career in 1972 as a writer, researcher, and organizer with the Institute for Southern Studies, a social justice organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1990, CHIP began a 30-year career as program administrator with the federal government directing the NIEHS, which stands for National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, worker training program, and designing training programs for vulnerable workers in high-risk occupations. Chip was given the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary's Award for exceptional service in 2001 for his role in responding to the World Trade Center attacks. And after the NIEHS response to the Katrina disaster, Chip was given the Health and Human Services Secretary's Award for distinguished service in 2006, and the National Institute of Health Director's Award in 2011 for responding to the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill. In 2011, Chip was given the Tony Mazzocchi Award for lifetime achievement by the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health.

Jill James:

After retiring, which I put in air quotes with my fingers as I'm saying this, from the NIEHS, Chip accepted a role with federal OSHA as Deputy Assistant Secretary for pandemic and emergency response. And then after retiring again, Chip took on a role as new policy advisor with MDB, Inc. Where he is today. MDB focuses on emergency public health, environmental science and health, global health and climate change, safe water, and occupational safety and health. All of this to see, Chip has seen, experienced and solved some intense challenges for worker health and safety, and has stood in the gap to protect and promote worker justice for decades. Today, I asked him back on this anniversary episode to talk about the hard things we face as a profession, and the critical importance of having a personal resilience practice so that we all might do and continue to do our critical work. Chip joins us today from North Carolina. Welcome back, Chip.

Chip Hughes:

Aw shucks.

Jill James:

Aw shucks. What's going on in your world? I'm hearing a bird in the background. What's it like in North Carolina today?

Chip Hughes:

Yeah, we're tweeting. It's kind of fallish. The sky is blue. The clouds are beautiful. Yeah, it's nice. It's in the seventies.

Jill James:

Perfect.

Chip Hughes:

It's lovely.

Jill James:

Perfect.

Chip Hughes:

It feels like I'm in Minnesota.

Jill James:

Oh, probably not. It's not quite that warm here. I'm still bundled up. Had to wear mittens on my walk this morning.

Chip Hughes:

Thank you for that introduction, that was very sweet. Thank you, Jill.

Jill James:

You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. When I asked if you'd join me today, I asked if you'd be willing to talk about the hard things in our profession and about resilience. I'd like to start by asking you about some of the hardest things or challenges you've seen, helped with, or experienced in your career.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah, I think probably how the evolution of our awareness about the impact of mental health on workers and workplaces is probably the biggest thing. For me, going back to being on the pile at the World Trade Center, coining or feeling that term of a thousand-mile stare of people in precarious, uncontrolled, unpredictable situations, and having that impact on health overall and mental health is probably something to me that has driven my concern about trying to think about how to respond to those mental health issues. And more recently, over the years, thinking about response to the opioid crisis in the workplace has really been the driver for concerns that we have about total worker health, thinking about mental and physical health issues. So yeah, I think that's a big one. It's a big one.

Jill James:

It's a big one, and a nut that's so important to crack, and I hope that we can in our lifetimes.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we've made progress a lot on doing that, so I'm pretty optimistic. To me, the other thing I might reflect upon is that, and you might remember also, during the beginning of the COVID pandemic in, actually, March of 2020, I started convening these Friday afternoon calls that were a week look back each week as COVID progressed. And I think we were actually partnered with HSI at that time as we developed the first COVID modules for e-learning for workers, where we were trying to actually take, we'll say, quick breaking news and turn it into training materials as our understanding of worker protection, at that time, evolved. And one of the things that I wanted to reflect upon was that that actually became a template for bringing people together in group settings to deal with the emotions of the moment that we were feeling. And I don't know if you were part of this.

Jill James:

I was part of it. I remember it very specifically. And I remember being rung out every time because we were hearing from people from around the nation, from all different aspects and walks of life and employment settings. And you're right, it was like breaking news, here's what's happening in this corner.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah. And the thing that I remember that I did, because I believe that group meditation is really important, is that I invited meditation leaders to lead online group meditation. And it was something that I still look back on as being really significant because it was a group healing resilience process that we were doing with a group of people who were in severe trauma at that time. And it became, really, a beacon of hope, I think, with our community. And our community, of course, was trainers and people who were working with essential frontline workers as we groped through this process that we as a nation and as a world were dealing with. And so I always look back to that really fondly. And it was funny because later, you didn't include this in my resume, but after I left the Biden administration, I actually undertook a conversion process to Judaism.

Chip Hughes:

And I also was in the middle of actually doing my bar mitzvah. And what was funny about it was I actually got the great honor during the services on the Bema to talk about occupational safety and health and mental health resilience, actually, around this crazy thing where, I don't know if you remember this, Moses actually was leading the people at that time.

Jill James:

Yes.

Chip Hughes:

And I don't know if you remember when God had said, "Thou shalt not work on the Sabbath." And so there was an issue in the Bible, I think it was in Leviticus, where one of the people in Moses' tribe actually was collecting sticks for a fire. And he actually got stoned to death because he was working on the Sabbath. And so when I did my davar, it was actually about this question about work and health of whether we actually pay attention to rules ourselves about healthy work and the limitations on our bodies and our minds for doing that. But anyway, I know I'm far afield of where we were.

Jill James:

No, it's perfect, Chip, and it's where I want this conversation to go today as we're talking about hard things and the balance of resilience. And during that time with these Friday afternoon calls, which sometimes were more often than just Fridays, especially in the beginning, and I was part of many of those meditation endings to those meetings with you. And it left such a mark on me, and I want to come back to that after we talk about some more hard things. But you were working on your conversion, as you say, and congratulations on that and the hard work in that as well. And from that time and what I experienced and learned from you in that setting, I started my own journey as well, which ended up being a 500-hour study of sacred yogic texts.

Chip Hughes:

Oh, wow. Wow. That's so cool. That's so cool.

Jill James:

And I teach breath and meditation now...

Chip Hughes:

Oh my God, that's so great.

Jill James:

... In my community.

Chip Hughes:

That's so great.

Jill James:

And all launched from resilience that I learned from that time together.

Chip Hughes:

That's so great.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah, in my davar, my sermon, I made reference to Shabbat Shalom calls. That was my regular practice for going into the Sabbath, which really was what those initial calls were about. And then I would call it a Jonathan Rosen, or an Arturo or Gila, at five o'clock on Friday as Shabbat began. So that became a big tradition for me that continues on because of how we actually hold each other and then create that sacred space for conversations.

Jill James:

That's right.

Chip Hughes:

I see that as a really big part of our work as health and safety professionals to do that, which is the joining of our personal lives and our professional lives.

Jill James:

That's right. And sacred space is a good word, I think for us to think about in terms of the hard work that we each do in my tenure. And you know that I've worked for the OSHA agency for almost a decade. And when I travel the countryside in my state where I did my work as an investigator, I call the spaces where someone lost their life, sacred space. And so when I'm driving through my state like I was a couple of weeks ago, and my partner and I were on our way to South Dakota for college graduation, and we got to this one community. And I said to him, I'm like, "Mark, sacred space here in this community. This is where Nick lost his life right here." And this business that was a bank is now this. And now we just drove past that graveyard, and that's where he is. And it's sacred space. And we hold that, and we have those sacred spaces in our work lives, in this work as EHS professionals and the hard work that we do every day.

Jill James:

And some of those days are harder and more devastating than others. And many of us, and people who are listening, do this work solo or as part of smaller teams. And our challenges sometimes come from within our organizations, whether that's we're trying to get an initiative pushed forward against some resistance. We're trying to get budget for something, or we're working alone and there's too much work and not enough hands. And sometimes, our work is also impacted by forces that come at us from the outside. Outside forces that impact our work is something that you, Chip, have dedicated your career to, whether it was a natural disaster, an oil spill, or a terror attack, or a pandemic, or socioeconomics.

Jill James:

And our listeners have experienced those outside forces impacting their work as well. So those challenges that come at us from the outside, we experienced together as a profession like we did during the pandemic. And today, we're having one of those experiences again from outside our organization with the workforce reductions at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, and the cuts to the important work that they do there, which impacts all of us professionally and the people that we serve. So for listeners who might not be aware of the history of what NIOSH is and its work, could you give a little bit of a history lesson for our listeners, just a little bit based on your...

Chip Hughes:

Yeah, no, I was just thinking, NIOSH actually was created out of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which of course was passed in 1970 and signed by President Nixon. And I don't know, you remember, I actually sponsored a 50th anniversary.

Jill James:

I do remember, I was there.

Chip Hughes:

And then a remembrance of the first people who were part of the creation of OSHA and NIOSH and the passage of that act, and everything that went into that, which of course, in terms of looking at history from the 1960s, really, the coal mining industry and the deaths of coal miners in accidents, and also in black lung was an important part, actually a precursor even to the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of OSHA. And so the important thing that is about the birth of NIOSH is how we actually bring a research fact-based approach to how we think about the prevention of chronic workplace diseases and injuries and illnesses.

Chip Hughes:

And so whether it's HHEs, health hazard evaluations that might look at an acute situation of doing an assessment of something that we can't figure out that's going on that's hurting people, or longer term research programs around specific health issues, or thinking back to the origins of the original act, which was the creation of criteria documents that did literature overviews and adopted a holistic approach to how we think about prevention. Just thinking back, one of the original criteria documents was about heat, hot. Yeah.

Jill James:

And gee, aren't we still talking about that today?

Chip Hughes:

Oh, yeah, we are so. Well, I guess we're allowed to, yeah. But that's been the evolution of NIOSH as a research-based agency focused on worker safety and health. And unfortunately, it's been placed in the crosshairs of this most current administration and this existential moment that we're in around the survival of a science-based approach to prevention and protection of workers. So what I wanted to reference is two events that happened yesterday. One, of course, was the MAHA release of the chronic disease report at the White House with the president and with Secretary Kennedy, which is this effort to look at how chronic disease conditions are impacting children, but also our entire population, which is a really important issue.

Chip Hughes:

And then also at the same time was a large rally and demonstration to support the continued existence of NIOSH as an organization. So the point being that we had this confluence of factors around having concern about protecting people at the same time that we have the dissolution and destruction of the core infrastructure that's driven efforts to protect workers. And each of them are running into each other in this question about what's the proper role of the government? What's the proper role of scientific research? And to me as a government worker and now a government contractor, what's the best approach for protecting people? And I am, of course, baffled like everybody else, but I'm also angry and I'm upset, and I want to preserve our profession and the science base that we've developed to keep being able to use it to protect people. So it's quite a quandary, I must say.

Jill James:

It is a quandary. And it's not as if the work at NIOSH is complete.

Chip Hughes:

No. Not at all.

Jill James:

As you talked about any of us who have done this work for any amount of time, know that some hazards are the same hazards that we've been battling forever, and then some are new things.

Chip Hughes:

Oh, yeah.

Jill James:

And some are things, like what you talked about, mental health impacts aren't new, it's something that we hadn't been paying attention to before. But the opioid crisis-

Chip Hughes:

Jill, the last year, I've not even talked to you about this, but no, I decided a year ago to focus on AI as the health and safety risk in the workplace. I'm not talking about avian influenza, by the way.

Jill James:

Right, which is also something that NIOSH would research.

Chip Hughes:

Of course. But I'm talking about artificial intelligence. And it was interesting because John Howard actually published a really elegant piece in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. And actually, I was at a keynote address that he recently gave, where as we think about how an algorithmic workplace operates and that we have our SOPs, our standard operating procedures being determined by bots that we don't even know how they decided to tell us what to do, we face new health and safety threats that we had never even anticipated. And so just going to your point about emerging threats and how we think about them or how we respond to them, that's been one that I've been obsessed with for the past year, and have that concern.

Jill James:

Yeah, and is the work and has been the work of NIOSH. So if this sounds like news to people, yes, there's been cuts to the workforce at NIOSH and also the work that people have been doing and are currently doing. Are there any other examples that you'd like to give so our listeners know what's at stake if this sounds like something new to them?

Chip Hughes:

Well, no, I think that the question about the priorities in our country, whether it's about OSHA or it's about EPA or my own home agency, NIHS, the National Institute of Health, it's really hard. And of course, I know it too well because I personally know so many people who've lost their jobs or had their careers interrupted.

Jill James:

And their research.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah, and had information that was publicly available that was on a website, which has been disappeared.

Jill James:

Yes, I know. I've looked for those things that I can no longer find.

Chip Hughes:

All those things. I know. They're gone. They're gone. They're gone. Yeah, so it's really hard.

Jill James:

And that's not hyperbole for anyone who's listening.

Chip Hughes:

No, no. Not really, not really. No, and so I feel like part of my job has been to help support the people who are on the front lines, and who are still in the agencies, and who are still trying to figure out what the right thing to do is, do that. And I think it's an existential fight for the future of our profession that is really worth doing. And I think what's hard is that I think about times that I've felt like I hated the federal government, I hated the government, I didn't believe what the government was saying.

Chip Hughes:

And so when you think about credibility and truth and belief, I feel that the hard thing that we have to reflect upon as professionals is that in a sense, our perspective and our beliefs are being called into question, and our credibility is being called into question. But we have to understand that from an effective communications perspective, about health communication, and that this is the most painful thing to say, is to feel like our efforts to communicate health risks, health problems, health solutions, has not been effective, and that we've lost our capacity to communicate with broad swathes of the American people. And of course, nothing illustrates that better than COVID, where what we might think is a very clean and clear and elegant solution of, wearing a mask, getting a vaccine, social distancing.

Jill James:

Doing ventilation.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah. All those things.

Jill James:

Remove the hazard. Yeah, the things EHS professionals knew forever once we knew what hazard it was that we were dealing with.

Chip Hughes:

That we would think would be so unquestionable at all. And so I think that's where I've landed here in doing professional introspection about what it is that we... And I'm sure Francis Collins and Tony Fauci, they might be angry, but they're thinking the same thoughts, which are, how can we do better to take... And I think the biggest thing to me is knowing the complexity of the scientific process, where we know that we're always dealing with a hypothesis that we don't know whether we're going to answer it or not with however our intervention goes that is a complexity, that then you have to explain to the American people that, for example, fewer people will end up in the hospital if they get a COVID vaccine. But of course, people are still going to get COVID. And yes, they still might end up in a hospital, but how do you explain that nuance to people, I think is still a risk communications challenge.

Jill James:

Absolutely. And I think it's one that resonates with any of the listeners to this podcast and in our profession. Pick a hazard, pick a health hazard, like exposure to noise, communicating the importance of protecting your hearing, and what that will do for your total health. And yeah, we could talk about examples all day. Yeah, so everyone who's listening, if some or all of this hard news is new to you, I'm sorry to be the bearer of some challenging news. And I want everybody to know that there's some good news too. And one of those pieces of good news is if anyone who's a listener is a member of the ASSP, the American Society of Safety Professionals, or the AIHA, the American Industrial Hygiene Association, or if your organization is part of the National Safety Council, know that those organizations, along with 460 other organizations, have banded together with one voice, to urge Congress to stop the planned cuts to NIOSH.

Jill James:

ASSP, and the AIHA and NSC all have written about their advocacy, and I'll include links to those statements in the show notes so that you can read them yourselves. And this is indeed a shared hard time, hard time with implications on our profession and the workers that we serve. And so know that individuals and professionals, we too can advocate for ourselves, or ask one of our professional organizations that we belong to, how we can be supportive to their advocacy on behalf of our profession. And I think there's good news in that. I think there's good news in that.

Chip Hughes:

Love the optimism. Keep hope alive. Please keep hope alive.

Jill James:

Right, and that's what comes with resilience. So let's get back to that piece or start talking about it. Yeah, start talking about it. Go ahead, Chip, did you want to say something?

Chip Hughes:

No. No, you go.

Jill James:

All right. So you had mentioned 2020. You mentioned the Friday afternoon calls that we did with and during COVID, and the intensity of that time. And thank you for inviting me into those Friday calls, and my coworkers at HSI, and the opportunity that we had to work with your subject matter experts to create the training that went out across the country. And each of those Friday calls, I was like, "Holy crap. This is so hard. This is so hard." And so many of the people that were coming to the calls were talking about such devastating things, and then the subject matter experts that you had assembled to be that cadre of people, to help to create the training, to help protect the people who are on the front lines. This wasn't new to you, you had been doing this, as I read in your bio, through many, many, many a disaster.

Jill James:

But then I would hear joy in your voice. And I would hear joy in the voices of the other people that you've been working with for a millennia. And I'm like, "What in the heck? How are these people doing this? I've got a box of Kleenex on my desk after one of these calls. And Chip is still laughing, and he's happy. And yes, we are ending with these meditations, but holy cats, he's been at this for over 30 years, and he keeps coming back to well do another challenge of another hard thing and another hard thing and another hard thing with all of the people who've worked along and beside you for all of these years." So I remember calling you and asking, "How the heck are you doing this? I have no idea how to do this." So I'm curious, could you share with us, when did you figure out that resilience was important in your career? And then maybe how do you define it, Chip?

Chip Hughes:

Yeah. Yeah. You know what's so funny? I think back to public health school, and I think back to feeling like health promotion was this sham. And for this audience, when Total Worker Health came out, I feel like I didn't buy it at all. And no offense to NIOSH or anybody out there, because I feel like I've evolved what I think about that, a lot of it has to do with feeling like we blame the victim for the circumstances that people find themselves in. And that might have to do with, in the case of Total Worker Health, about feeling like we were focusing on problems that individuals have versus hazards that are in the workplace. And I feel like that's been an evolving struggle to come to a bigger viewpoint about that. And where I wanted to go with this is that to me, I feel like in the course of my life, I had a stroke in my fifties, I have explored meditation, of course, exercise. I'm actually reading Eric Topol's book, Super Agers, right now.

Jill James:

Writing that down. Okay.

Chip Hughes:

Well, yeah, whatever Eric Topol says or talks about, he's on Substack too, he's really good. But Super Agers really brings together all the components of healthy living. And I've been somewhat of a geek about health and about healthiness, but about healthiness for myself and for my community, that I feel like has been really an important thing of having that journey to come to optimizing daily life and building a large social network, the care and feeding of that social network, the understanding of the interconnections between eating, exercise, and sleep, strength, stretching and stamina.

Chip Hughes:

Those things, I think, over the course of my life, have become more of my north star of how I think about how daily life should be lived. So it's funny because the other part that's funny for all of us is that we always feel like we advocate for other people. But part of what I've always been a problem for me in public health as a health educator is that it feels hypocritical sometimes to advocate for things that we're telling other people to do that we don't do ourselves. And so I feel like I've tried to become less of a hypocrite. If I can preach that someone should do something, I want to make sure that I do it every day.

Jill James:

And that you're modeling it.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah, whatever my A1 seat is, or however many reps I do, or how many steps I do, or whatever, are all emblematic of you want to make sure that you're walking the walk in the best way of being the best version of yourself. And so a lot of that, I think I'm trying to come to answer your question, which is I feel like I've tried to be able to develop a practice for myself that can sustain me well, maybe for more decades, I don't know.

Chip Hughes:

But it's something, I think that takes a lifetime to come to, whether you call that wisdom or whatever. But how we think about our own total worker health as workers is something that I feel like I have a better sense about it now, both about how to do it, but also how to share it, teach it, train it, whatever. So even having you ask me this question is making me think about that in a way that how do we best contribute to the propagation of the species, and our survival on this planet, and all those kinds of things. So I actually do think about those things on a daily basis.

Jill James:

I do too.

Chip Hughes:

I know you do.

Jill James:

And it came later as well. And perhaps people who are listening and we're thinking about the hard things of our careers and our lives and the forces at play that are on the inside and the things that are on the outside, and you're like, "Gee, what are Jill and Chip talking about? I've got a fire over here, a fire over there, a fire over here. I feel like my pulse is in my throat. How could I possibly step out to even take that break?" And I have a feeling, Chip, I believe this myself, and I suspect you do too, that in order to even continue fighting those fires, you must step out and take a break for yourself.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I feel like learning what it is that you can impact yourself, the serenity prayer, is so important. And yeah, I feel like we've learned so much about how to operate as humans, and I'll say particularly in this century, where the pace with which technological change has happened and what impact it's had on our brains is so critical. And I struggle with that every day. I feel like Alzheimer's, dementia, how we do brain protection might be one of the biggest issues that we have. And whether that has to do with how you're conscious of your attention and intention in the moment, and how you take care of that capacity to be conscious are maybe one of the biggest challenges that we have. And that's to not pay attention to information overload, the digital divide, and what it's like to navigate as a analog digital person. When I first joined X, what did they call X?

Jill James:

Whatever that was called back then.

Chip Hughes:

What was that called? Yeah, it was something about birds. It was something about tweeting. I can't remember. But my handle from back years is Digitalchip.

Jill James:

That's a play on words. That's funny.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah, that's always been part of, the fact that we offload so much of our brain into these devices, which is both good and bad.

Jill James:

Yeah. you're talking about balance and the importance of finding that balance in order to stay in the fight, to stay being able to advocate for people, and for ourselves, and the importance thereof. Maybe it wasn't a pivotal moment, or maybe it was for you, but do you recall when this light came on and you're like, "I can't keep going at this speed. I've got to figure out this balance thing." Do you remember that? You said you had a stroke when you were 50. Was it then, or was it before that, or when did this start for you?

Chip Hughes:

Oh, yeah. That was a big one. I've had this weird situation. I'm a DES, diethylstilbestrol baby, so I came into the 20th century with some stacked cards because of some medical experiments that my mother was in. But anyway, what it eventually led to, and our family's had all kinds of health issues because of that. But I have arterial septal defect. I have a hole in my heart. And so I never knew that until a clot went to my brain. So I was 54. But yeah, that was a really turning point, big event, wake up call, slap in the face, whatever, of understanding health. And I actually have severed both of my achilles tendons at different parts of my life.

Jill James:

Ouch, Chip.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Oh, I can feel that.

Chip Hughes:

No, no, no. It's the worst feeling ever. But the point of the story is rehab, learning how to walk well, learning again how to talk, learning how to write, I feel like we all have to get to be really good at rehab and PT. The hardest part of what I think you're getting at is when you have these turning point events in your life where you've faced some personal disaster or whatever, whether it's a divorce or it's a heart attack, or it's cancer.

Jill James:

Been there, been there, yeah. Yeah, not the heart attack.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah, so being able to have the emotional and physical tools to repair yourself in those moments is probably what resilience needs to look like of taking a situation like that and being able to have emotional growth, and the plasticity of your brain and your body to be able to either evolve or learn from or take from that experience, some positivity, even though it's like the worst day of your life. And so I feel like that's what I remember my stroke being like for me.

Jill James:

Beautiful.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Beautiful. So how are you practicing resilience today? If someone's listening and they're like, "Huh," what ideas? I will happily share what I do, but I'm interested to hear how you practice resilience.

Chip Hughes:

Well, every day has to involve difficult physical challenge and difficult mental, emotional challenge.

Jill James:

Say more, yeah.

Chip Hughes:

What that looks like is, I'm so fortunate to have my e-bike, that's one of my best friends that I converted to about two years ago. I got a [inaudible 00:46:47] from Amsterdam. So I try to ride that every day if I can, three to five miles. I actually have my kayak up the hill, so I try to kayak a couple of times a week. Of course, I go to a gym. But I feel like the harder part is the challenge of brain, the brain challenge. And so that's why, for example, I'm in an improv standup comedy class, acting class.

Jill James:

I love this.

Chip Hughes:

And it's funny because I also feel like social interactions are so important. And over the last few years, I've actually tried to focus on, I'm sorry to old people, I tried to focus on hanging out with young people. But then it's so funny because doing this class, I've been with all these people who are in my age group, and they're okay, they're not so bad. I feel better about hanging out with my peer group. Maybe they're going to be okay, I don't know.

Jill James:

Yes, go ahead.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah, so social interaction. And of course, that's why I've been deeply passionate into, I'm working with all these federal workers groups. I'm actually still working with the worker training program. I'm actually doing a large historical excavation of the brown lung, black lung movement that I'm doing, which involves building archives from the 1960s and 1970s of folks who were activists in the early occupational safety and health movement. So part of it is how you actually structure each day to be able to keep sharp and do all the right things and all that. So I don't know, that's how I've evolved. And I call that my failed retirement. So that's a whole comedy routine. I won't go into it right now, but yeah.

Jill James:

Well, once you get your shtick down, you might have to come back...

Chip Hughes:

Yeah, right, I'll just do an improv.

Jill James:

... To try to do the comedy routine. And I hope what you all heard in Chip's description there, it was balance. Know the things that you're doing for your mental, emotional, physical health and being able to step back into the gap and work on the projects that you're working on now, support the people that you're supporting now, and continue at this profession that you've been at.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jill James:

I want to credit you, Chip, for really launching my interest in resilience because of that time in 2020, and the launching pad that it took me on. My personal practice, like I mentioned, I did my 500 hours of study of yoga, which includes multiple sacred yogic texts, and the teachings thereof, and breath and meditation. But I start every day by stretching and using my spine.

Chip Hughes:

Of course.

Jill James:

I have arthritis, and I come to my mat every day after I roll out of bed, and that's where I start. And like you, I get outside every day. Yes, I live in Minnesota, but I do get outside every day, including when it's 30 and 50 below like it was this winter.

Chip Hughes:

Good for you.

Jill James:

I have a friend that I walk with year round, and she and I meet in the street, as we say, and we walk hard for an hour. And I have a daily meditation practice.

Chip Hughes:

Nice. Nice, nice.

Jill James:

I sit for a certain number of minutes, minutes that are manageable for work-life balance. And it turns out my old kitty sits in my lap, so he meditates with me every day, which is pretty funny, I'm like, "Come on, Jack, it's time to meditate," and he'll come sit in my lap. But yeah, engaging with the elements is what's important to me with the earth and the wind and the air and the water. And those are the things that I find grounding and build resilience to be able to jump back in and do the work that needs to be done.

Chip Hughes:

Oh, that's beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah, the connection to nature is really important, for sure.

Jill James:

Yeah. Yeah, and you do it too.

Chip Hughes:

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Jill James:

Yeah. So it'd be interesting to hear from listeners if you all have resilience practices as well, or maybe hearing this today is like, "Gosh, I got to start something. I got to start something." And give yourself permission to jump off the...

Chip Hughes:

The treadmill.

Jill James:

Yeah, the intensity.

Chip Hughes:

You don't have to get on a treadmill, it's okay.

Jill James:

Right, yeah, jump off the intensity wheel with work. The work is always going to be there. The hard things are always going to be there. It's having the resilience to keep at it for as long as Chip has successfully.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah. No, but the work-life balance thing just becomes more of a reality the longer that you are in your career. And how we actually can effectively communicate that to younger people so that they understand it at an earlier age than we did is probably one of the biggest challenges.

Jill James:

Yeah. Right, it goes back to what you said before about just public health messaging and EHS messaging and all the things that we do, and that constant challenge of, are we doing this well? Are we doing this right? And reiterating. And I think that's where we're at in this moment, too.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah. No, the Times had a little piece in wellness this morning that was about judginess. So I find that's really hard about how to communicate without being judgy, or that people take it that way. So I feel like that's really hard to figure out more...

Jill James:

It really is.

Chip Hughes:

... How you can make a point without saying anything, just being as opposed to saying.

Jill James:

Yeah, coming at things, understanding that everyone has their own lived experience and their own...

Chip Hughes:

Yeah, so the message is about worker protection, environmental protection. Those are things that we as a profession need to think about, how to communicate without being perceived that we're being judgy. This is part of the nanny state. We're telling you that you need to do this for your own good.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Chip Hughes:

That introspection that needs to happen within our profession, I think is a big one. And unfortunately, how we have to participate in making America's health great again.

Jill James:

We sure do. We sure do. And I think many of us are doing that work now. The more I speak with professionals on this podcast and at conferences, the idea of total worker health in whatever way you want to call it, is really being paid attention to by our profession right now, or at least it seems like that to me. I'm hearing more and more of that. And I think that's excellent.

Chip Hughes:

Yeah. No, and I think the other fight or about approaches of the course of our careers that we've dealt with is behavior-based safety, and how those words can be triggering to people because they feel like somebody else is telling them what to do, and somebody else knows what's best for them. Now, all that might be true. And yes, there may be important pieces of knowing what the best thing to do is, but if nobody will even listen to you even say that because of how you're saying it, then maybe that's a problem.

Jill James:

That's right.

Chip Hughes:

I can see the merit in both approaches. But if at the end of the day, people don't get healthier, hazards don't get reduced, workplaces don't get safer, then here we are, back to the basic health communication challenge.

Jill James:

That's right.

Chip Hughes:

So I think that's wrapped up in this whole Make America Healthy Again movement. Ironically, I think people want to feel like they have control of their own health, and they can decide what's best for themselves.

Jill James:

Yeah. Who doesn't?

Chip Hughes:

And I think that's a traditional American libertarian belief. And how environmental and occupational health professionals deal with that challenge is really what's ahead of us now.

Jill James:

Yeah, and how we apply that science, the things that we've learned, the things that we know to be true, and share and teach that in a way that people see the good that's in it for themselves.

Chip Hughes:

Hopefully, yeah.

Jill James:

And what's helpful in healing in that. Oh, Chip, this has been-

Chip Hughes:

I hate to tell you, but an hour has passed. I hate to tell you, an hour has passed.

Jill James:

I know, an hour has passed, and we need to wrap this up. And I am so grateful for all that you've taught me, and for bringing this...

Chip Hughes:

Vice versa.

Jill James:

... To our audience, thank you, today, and for being part of the seventh anniversary of the podcast.

Chip Hughes:

Yay.

Jill James:

Yay.

Chip Hughes:

Happy birthday to you.

Jill James:

Thank you. And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good. May our employees and those we influence know that our profession cares deeply about human wellbeing, which is the core of our practice. 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, or if you prefer to read the transcript and listen, you can do that at hsi.com. 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 Chip and I. Special thanks to Emily Gould, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.