Jill:

This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI and Vivid Learning Systems. This is a special edition of the podcast recorded July 30th, 2020. My name is Jill James HSI's Chief Safety Officer and today I'm joined by Jonathan Rosen. Jonathan is a certified industrial hygienist and is principal consultant for AJ Rosen and Associates, LLC providing occupational safety and industrial hygiene services to labor unions, government agencies and organizations throughout the United States.

Jonathan also works for the National Clearinghouse for worker safety and health training, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, worker education and training program. He has served as the director of the Occupational Health and Safety department for New York State's public employees Federation, AFL-CIO for 22 years. Jonathan has been co-investigator on several federal NIOSH intervention research grants and is joining us from his home today in New York. Welcome to the show, Jonathan, and thank you for being here.

Jonathan:

Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be a part of it.

Jill:

The reason I wanted Jonathan to join us for this special episode is to highlight the critical work Jonathan has been doing since the beginning of our current pandemic. You see, Jonathan is the primary author, subject matter expert for two critical training courses offered free to anyone through the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences or NIEHS, which is a division of the National Institutes of Health. The courses are titled, Protecting Yourself from COVID-19 in the Workplace Training Tool and the other, Protecting Yourself from COVID-19 in the Workplace: Essential and Returning Workers Training Tool.

You may recall, if you are a listener to the podcast regularly hearing about the first course during episode 54 of this podcast, where Chip Hughes, the director of the NIEHS shared news of the general awareness tool when it was released. Since we've heard from Chip, Jonathan completed authoring the second course. Jonathan and I met through our joint work in support of the NIEHS for this endeavor. My company HSI with Jonathan's help and the collective work of our learning solutions team created the online versions of this course or the courses rather, which again are free to anyone and we'll share links to the online and the PowerPoint trainers versions in the show notes.

It's not very often that we get to hear the backstory to critical training development, yet here we are with you, Jonathan and I can't wait to have you explain your process, what people will learn from these courses. And yet, before we do that, can you tell us a little bit about your journey in health and safety that led you to where you are today?

Jonathan:

Sure. I'd be glad to. I was a child of the 1960s and at that time there was a lot of protests going on for peace, civil rights, workers' rights. And my whole family was kind of swept up in that. My father was economist who was trained under the GI Bill. He fought against Hitler in World War II and my brother and sister and I all got involved in labor unions and I became a union steward working at a plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where I moved to. And I became the chairman of the union safety and health committee. And the plant was A. O. Smith, which made truck and car frames, huge complex between 27th and 35th street in Milwaukee, a really great employer. At the time I was hired, we made $5 an hour, which is probably $35 an hour or 40 today.

And in fact, my very first job, I was a fire watcher because they had had a fire in the paint tank and that paid even more than the $5 an hour. And I learned a lot about the workplace and workplace safety by being a factory worker and a union activist and a safety committee chairman. And there was a rich history in that plant of people losing their fingers and their arms. The story was, in the old days, the bus would pull up to the factory gate and the bus driver would say slaughter house or butcher shop because so many people lost fingers and arms in the power presses.

Jill:

Wow.

Jonathan:

And at one point in the late 1980s, I was full-time for the union on safety and health and I worked directly with the company safety director and the union president, and I got access to the company's archives and they had materials from the 1930s. Joe is a safe worker and he was holding up his hands, showing that he had all of his fingers. He knows better than to stick his finger in the press, was the approach back then.

Jill:

Oh, my gosh.

Jonathan:

Today we have all kinds of standards and all kinds of controls to prevent people from losing their fingers and arms in such machinery. But that was a great opportunity in late 80s for me to dig into that history.

Jill:

Wow. So you're a certified industrial hygienist. Jonathan, when did that enter your life?

Jonathan:

Well, when I went to work as a full-time safety rep for the union, I did that for two years. And at one point, the company had a bad quarterly report and they put me and the others who were doing quality and other supportive activities back on the assembly line. And by then I knew I really wanted to do the safety and health work full-time. So I had started to take college courses and I eventually was able to get an undergraduate degree in science, math, and technology.

And when they put me back on the line, I started looking for a full-time work in the labor movement as a safety and health professional. And I was fortunate to get hired by the New York State Public Employees Federation, even though I didn't have all those credentials. So while I was working and raising three children, I also was able to get a master's degree in industrial health from university of Michigan. And after I completed the master's degree, which was 1993, I got the CIH two years later.

Jill:

Wow. What a journey.

Jonathan:

Yeah. It was quite an incredible experience. And I was also fortunate that while I was going to college and getting the academic training, I was also doing the work in the real world. So that gave me a kind of a different perspective on what I was learning and a lot of what I was learning, I was able to immediately apply, but it also gave me the motivation. I really knew what I wanted to do. And so, I was really hungry to get the knowledge and the training.

I remember in college, I would try to read every page of every assignment, whereas some of my fellow students, they were just trying to read what they had to, to get by. But I was really thirsting to learn as much as I could. So I remember having a medical dictionary by my side and getting up at 5:00 in the morning to study before I went into my job at the Public Employees Federation.

Jill:

Yeah. So, Jonathan you had explained that you'd been working with the unions and working at the plant in Milwaukee and safety was definitely part of all that. At what point in there, do you remember thinking, "Yeah, this is going to be my job. I really, really want to work on safety." Was there something that cemented that in your head or was it just kind of the rich history of your family like you talked about, it just seemed like a default?

Jonathan:

Yeah. So I've always been somebody that was motivated around making the world a better place for humanity. And always, my father and my brother and sister are always standing up for the underdog. And you look at the inequalities in our society rich versus poor, the discrimination against minorities, the treatment of immigrants, all of that. It was just our family value is, that you should stand up for the underdog, that you should treat everybody... I don't care if they have a PhD, an MD, or if they're picking up garbage, they deserve your respect for the work that they're doing. And so those values were really strongly a part of my upbringing. And when I went to work at the plant and got involved in the union and got involved in the safety and health, I found that as a way to really make my life's work true to those values and whereabouts saving people's lives, keeping them from dying, keeping them from getting diseased, losing their fingers.

When I was at PEF, one of the biggest hazards was workplace violence in the state institutions. And really anywhere the people were dealing with the public, but especially the institutions for people with mental illness and the prisons and the youth detention facilities and the injuries that the workers would experience the nurses and the aids. It was not only broken bones and bruised bodies, but they also experienced terrible psychological trauma from those experiences of getting beaten up by patients or inmates or clients. That became a big focus of mine when I was at the Public Employees Federation.

Jill:

Yeah. Yeah. And Jonathan, how did you come to work with and alongside the NIEHS? How did that come about?

Jonathan:

Well, when I was leaving the Public Employees Federation, I was kind of taking advantage of contacting all the people I had worked with through the Occupational Safety and Health section of the American Public Health Association, as well as the labor movement. And the American Public Health Associations, Occupational Safety and Health section has people from government, academia, labor, and nonprofit organizations.

And so, one of the people I had worked with was a Debra Weinstock who had been at the National AFL-CIO, health and safety department. And at the time Hurricane Sandy had hit. And one of the things that the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences worker training program does, is they've been very active in disaster mobilizing grantees to do worker and community training during disasters to protect workers and community members from injury and illness and death when they're responding to these disasters. That was a major connection that I made through Deborah and Chip Hughes, the director of the NIEHS worker training program. And it kind of evolved from there.

Jill:

Well, would you mind sharing a little bit about these courses that I talked about in the beginning? Who are they for? And then who takes the classes? And then can you explain a little bit about how do you start from scratch? I mean, especially Jonathan, it's a novel virus. No one's ever dealt with this before. Somebody's got to create training and here you are. I mean, what a journey.

Jonathan:

Yeah. So I think as the news about the virus was coming, I started collecting articles and especially I was looking at the peer-reviewed literature. I'm on the mailing list for the Journal of the American Medical Association and I'm on a number of other mailing lists. There's a, the National Committee on Occupational Safety and Health has extensive mailing lists protecting America's workers. And they send around a lot of peer-reviewed and news articles. So, I collect all that information and I organize it into folders around different topics, everything from personal protective equipment to healthcare workers, to essential workers. And so, I do a lot of that type of basic research to get familiar with what's going on. But I also have a lot of experience with infectious diseases.

When I first got hired by PEF in 1990 was when tuberculosis resurgent. And it was related to people with HIV. And so drug resistant tuberculosis came on the scene and it was the people with HIV, their immune system is compromised. So we weren't detecting that they were also infected with some of them with the drug resistant TB. And in New York State, some of the inmates were taken to a community hospital in New York City and then transferred all over the state to different prisons and hospitals.

Jill:

Oh, no.

Jonathan:

And so the TB, the drug resistant TB was spread all over the prison system and into these hospitals, including state hospitals in which the PEF members worked. And one of them in Upstate New York, 70 workers were infected.

Jill:

Oh, wow.

Jonathan:

Why? Because the negative pressure isolation room was positively pressurized. So the drug resistant, the contaminated air with drug resistant TB was literally being blown out of the room down the hall, and it infected 70 workers and two patients and there were some fatalities. And then some of the fatalities went to the morgue and some of the morgue workers when they were carving into the cadavers to do the autopsies, they got infected. And that led NIOSH to evaluate the safety and health of the people doing the autopsies and coming up with standards for ventilation and other control measures.

And that was just one, the very first infectious disease experience I had. There was also the effort by President Bush to get everybody vaccinated against smallpox, which we mobilized against because that was not a good approach to protecting people. It was putting people at risk because that was a live virus vaccine that could cause serious health effects and even death. And the only smallpox in the world is in the CDCs freezer and in Russia's freezer.

Jill:

Oh, wow.

Jonathan:

And so some people feel that that should be eliminated, but some people are saying, "Well, we've got to keep it for research purposes or in case it gets in the hands of bio terrorists." That was a big campaign. Then we had H1N1, we had H5N1, we had SARS1 one, which was very relevant to SARS2. And I actually saved all those folders with all those PDF files from SARS1. And one of the ironic things is the recommendations to protect workers for SARS1 were much better than what we're getting for SARS2, from both the WHO and the Centers for Disease Control.

Jill:

Why do you think that is Jonathan?

Jonathan:

Well, I think it has to do with the shortage of PPE and respirators. And I think a lot of the decisions are based on the shortage of the supply rather than what's best for the workers. But going back to the TB days, there was always a bit of a debate between industrial hygiene, occupational safety and health and infection control. Occupational health is more focused on exposure prevention, whereas infection control is break the chain of transmission.

And I've always felt that we should take the best of all disciplines and merge them. And I like working with people from different disciplines and learning from them and adapting their good practices and getting them to adapt mine. But instead there's been a historical clash about these things. And so industrial hygiene is really the experts on inhalation and aerosols and respiratory protection. And there's just been a big misunderstanding by some medical personnel and infection control personnel on the characteristics of aerosols and particles. A particle is a particle and a filter that can filter out sub-micron particles, it doesn't care if it's asbestos or SARS-CoV-2. It's going to basically do the same thing.

So in healthcare, we've always advocated that there should be a combination of control measures of analyzation, like the negative pressure, filtration, exhaust the air to the outside. Maybe use upper room ultraviolet irradiation, but on top of that respiratory protection for the healthcare workers and limit the number of workers that go in the room, that type of thing.

So, I've had all of that experience. We also were involved heavily around issues of bloodborne pathogens, HIV, hepatitis B, C, D, et cetera. And so, I did a lot to support injured workers and workers who were exposed and working with the union, a lot of advocacy, as well as research. And so I was able to bring all of those experiences and skill sets to the project of developing the curricula on the awareness training and then the essential worker training. And the other big skill set is adult training methodology and techniques. And that's a whole another kind of science and art. And that's one of the... One of things I like about safety and health is, I've always felt it was a mixture of science and art because you can be creative with it.

Jill:

You sure can.

Jonathan:

I mean, look at what Vivid does with all the, what I call the bells and whistles. It's like playing a video game. It's fun.

Jill:

Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah. Jonathan's referring to the learning solutions team and the instructional designers that took your work and research and used all those adult training methodologies and techniques you just referred to, to make engaging memorable learning experience.

Jonathan:

And we know some adult learners are more visual, some are more looking at numbers, some are looking at logic, some want statistics, some are motivated by emotion. So, as a curriculum developer and designer, you kind of want to hit on all of those different approaches and you also, because of the nature of what we're doing, we're creating a tool that can be modified and adapted to multiple industries and populations.

So, we try to aim for about an eighth grade level and we try to keep it simple. We want it to be visual, stimulating and very interactive. People tune out after about six minutes of lecture. I understand. So small group activities, we do a lot of that. And the theory there is that, adults have a lot of knowledge and experience to bring to the table. So if you can get them active in sharing their knowledge and experience, it will be much richer than if the trainer is the sole source of expertise and information.

Jill:

Right. Right. So, Jonathan, can you explain a little bit about the difference between the two courses, as you created them and kind of who those audiences are? And you're saying that you design them, it sounds like for lots of audiences, but can you describe those two courses a bit?

Jonathan:

Yeah. They're both awareness level, meaning that if a company or an organization is going to use them for their company or organizational training, they're going to need to put their specific policies and procedures and requirements into them. They don't have that. So the first one was really going over the basics of the characteristics of the disease and SARS-CoV-2 is the virus, COVID-19 is the disease talking about the symptoms, as we knew them, how it's transmitted. We've talked about... There's slides that talked about what was happening worldwide and in the US and those were slides where you could click on a link and update them.

And there was information about how to protect yourself and how to do a basic risk assessment to determine what level of protection is needed. We talked about some of the OSHA standards that are relevant, like personal protective equipment, respiratory protection, the general duty clause et cetera. Talked a little bit about disinfection and cleaning, but very much on the awareness level kind of the big picture level.

Jill:

Yeah. And then the other course.

Jonathan:

Yeah. The other course is geared towards essential and returning workers. And even though that is awareness there were a lot more detail about who are the essential workers. And you know, we made that one of the training techniques I use is animations where you put the question to the people you're training. And then at the end, after they've given you input you can click on the slide and it'll give you the summary, which is mainly what they've just shared with you. And in the Zoom or the virtual world, you get that input either through a chat box or a whiteboard, something like that. Although we have been able to do small group activities with the Zoom platform and some of the other platforms. But some of the other content differences is a lot about workers' rights right under OSHA, but also issues about right to refuse unsafe work. And in the current environment people are even complaining to the mayor, the police or the health department because OSHA has not been very active around complaints that they've received.

Jill:

That's right.

Jonathan:

And there's a whole section of photographs of, I think this was a kind of a creative technique. It's like, "What's wrong with this picture? What's the control measure?" So we had a... I was fortunate, my cousin who's, at one point was a professional photographer who lives in New York city, I called her up and she went around taking pictures of essential workers. So I've got a photo of a cop with no gloves, he's bearded wearing a respirator. And you know not, not very well protected if he had to get within a close distance to somebody to do his job. There was a taxi cab driver. And I think they were wearing some type of surgical mask. And there were grocery stores and postal workers.

My niece who's a nurse sent me a picture of what she was wearing, which was a face shield and a procedure mask. Now I believe she should have had a 95 as a minimum, but her facility was not providing them. And fortunately she has not been infected and she has two young children. That's a pretty serious condition. She was very nervous about infecting her family.

So I've been able to kind of get a lot of support from friends and family and colleagues. And I've had the experience of doing this for an IHS ever since Sandy. We did mold mocking and gutting and hurricane hazards. And we also developed resilience training for disaster workers, which was funded by the BP oil spill. And we piloted these courses in Louisiana, New York city and elsewhere United auto workers have adopted that program, which deals with stress and trauma.

And that's another topic that are covered in the COVID courses. The mental health effects for essential and returning workers are huge, people worried about getting infected, infecting their family. You go to the workplace and all the procedures have changed, and you've got these new requirements to wear a mask and socially distance and maybe you have to, maybe you're a cleaner and you have to do enhanced cleaning and disinfection, but there isn't an increase in the staffing.

And actually some of the training that I've been doing, one of the biggest stresses I'm hearing from rank and file workers is the whole issue of masks because it's become political, who enforces it? I mean, that's not the job for the cleaner to do, and yet they, I've heard rank and file workers to tell me about shouting matches between workers or workers with customers. Think about people working in parks where people are partying and congregating, that's a high risk situation. And I think that's spread a lot of a COVID, around the country. I'm sorry, what were you going to say?

Jill:

Right. Yeah. An increase in workplace violence.

Jonathan:

Oh yeah, definitely. Bullying and stress, yeah.

Jill:

A by product of this, for sure. For sure. So, Jonathan, the courses that you developed, both of them are consumable in a couple of different ways. And we've already talked about the online version, but the PowerPoint version and you were talking about Zoom and other meeting platforms. Can you talk about how trainers are using those? Just give a little glimpse into how that's working with the content.

Jonathan:

Yeah. So, we do have in both programs extensive instructor notes beneath the slides and the instructor notes have a lot of tips on how you can do the training or alternative ways to do it. There is guidance in there about tailoring it. So tailoring it, if you're training transportation workers for the MTA, then you're not going to be showing pictures of the grocery store. You're going to be showing pictures hopefully of the subway and the bus and getting people to talk about how to protect themselves in those circumstances. That would an example of how people would tailor it. Also, if there is a written policy or procedure, you could incorporate that into the training, is what we would recommend. And if there's personal protective equipment or respirators or a site specific cleaning and disinfection policy, all of that could be integrated into the training.

And if you're limited on time, if you don't have the full four to six hours that these programs are designed for, then you can reduce the time. For example, we have a fact sheet on the basics about SARS-CoV to COVID-19. And you can eliminate a good 15 slides or so by giving people the fact sheet. You can also be creative with the fact sheet and give that to the participants and have them read through it and ask them questions. What's the difference between SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19? You can develop different ways of interacting with the folks that you're training, depending on how much time and what their needs are.

Jill:

Yeah. Right. So anyone who's listening to this right now, who's a safety and health professional, you can have access, we'll conclude it in the show notes to the PowerPoint deck that Jonathan is referring to along with those instructor notes, as well as a link to the online version, which can be used, one person, one computer or an instructor could use it in a group setting as well and lean into those facilitator notes too. So it's, what we're talking about today is accessible to everyone and anyone and really encouraging people who rather than trying to struggle and do all this research that Jonathan's been talking about, it's already been done for you and it's accessible for anyone.

Jonathan:

And the instructor notes also have the references for the research that went into the program. But one thing I've been doing in these zoom trainings is, early on, either through a small group activity or open your mic or chat box asking people, "What are your concerns about COVID-19 as you returned to the workplace?" And that way, as a trainer, I'm hearing early on what people's concerns are. And that way, I can orient myself towards that. And if it means that we kind of get out of order in the training, that doesn't bother me because to me having the real interaction that people are tuned into and you're meeting needs as a trainer, that's more important than sticking to the agenda or sticking to the PowerPoint.

Jill:

Yeah. Yeah. And Jonathan, as you've been doing this training, and I mean, what a full circle description, you've authored it, you've written, developed it, and you're also using it. What are you hearing from people? What are their top concerns about returning to work? Are there themes that you're picking up? I mean, I think I can guess, but what are you hearing?

Jonathan:

A lot of people are planning on reopening and they're trying to figure out how to function. And a lot of the organizations, like I was, I had the rich opportunity of working with a community organization and they literally have hundreds and hundreds of people in their offices every day. And how do you create social distance? How do you work with the landlord to adjust the ventilation? All of those are big issues and still maintain the services and the connection with the community that you're serving. That's, they were very tuned into the training and we were able to kind of orient it towards that particular need.

There's other folks that I trained that were public employees and they brought up about the masks and the bullying and the lack of staff and resources. There was one fellow who worked for the state labor department who was upset because his computer kept crashing and he wanted to do a good job of serving the public and yet the computer that the state provided him kept crashing. So those were some of the kinds of issues people were bringing up.

Jill:

Right. Right. I think you had referenced earlier some pilot programming with training that you've maybe done now or in the past. Can you tell us a little more about that?

Jonathan:

Yeah. The process that NIEHS and the Clearinghouse uses, when we develop a training is, we haven't peer-reviewed usually by other federal agency partners, CDC, NIOSH, OSHA, ASPR, EPA, to name a few. And then we also have it peer-reviewed by grantees because our grantee community has tremendous expertise. We have university and labor based safety and health professionals, professors, researchers, and practitioners.

So, we go through a lot of revision before it even gets piloted. And then when we pilot it, we do a lot of evaluation at the end of the pilot, we get feedback from the participants and we try to note things that we can modify and improve. And then after we've done the piloting and the evaluation, we post it on the Clearinghouse website. And I think if you type in, into Google, national Clearinghouse for workers safety and health training, that'll get you to that website. And actually right on the opening page is a link to the COVID-19 resources right now.

Jill:

And we'll include them in the show notes.

Jonathan:

Yeah. It's actually a simple URL. I'll read it, tools.niehs.nih.gov/wetp/.

Jill:

Wonderful. Thank you. So is that peer-review part, is that kind of nerve wracking after you've poured your heart and soul into all of this research and writing and then to have peers review? Or what does that feel like for you?

Jonathan:

No. I mean, I welcome it because I've always felt that teamwork and collaboration, you always get a better product than just doing it on your own. You're bringing in other people's knowledge, experience. And so, there's a little bit of pain. Some of the comments you might not love, or you might think are nitpicking. We always tell people that things like grammar or type setting, don't worry about that. We have a, we work with a professional designer, we've worked with Vivid, we don't need you to fix the grammar or the layout, but invariably people comment on the grammar and the layout. So we triage that and what we do is we have a matrix and we put in all the comments slide by slide and we... So as we go through the comments, we document how we resolve them and make the edits and the changes. And I find that to be a really good process. And I think it really enriches the end product.

Jill:

Yeah. Right. Right. So Jonathan, is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience about the courses or just kind of current state of what you're seeing right now with training or the virus in your professional view?

Jonathan:

I just want to emphasize the importance of training. I think worker training is not always conducted and it's not understood how valuable it can be. Take a look at the healthcare industry, they've shifted over the years to video training. So you have a nurse working 12 hours, and you say during your half hour lunch break, watch this video on bloodborne pathogens. Well, you can do some of the training by video, but some of it needs to be interactive, where you're, if you're training people on things like mental health or resilience, for example, what makes that training dynamic is when people start telling their stories and sharing with you the traumas that they've been through and putting the human face on these issues. And I think when it comes to COVID-19, it's really important that people understand, why it's important to make the changes that we're making in the workplace, why you need to wear a mask, why you need to wear a respirator, how you Don and DAF it so you don't contaminate yourself.

The whole issue of how the virus is transmitted. Huge, huge issue. And if workers don't believe it or don't understand it, they're not going to cooperate. And what I've seen is a lot of employers, a lot of government officials, and even a lot of safety and health professionals tend to blame the worker for not complying. But then has that worker really been given rich training and education so that they understand why they need to. A good example is, respiratory protection in healthcare.

The OSHA standard requires training, but most of the training programs that are provided in healthcare are like 15 minute added onto a fit testing effort, or a 15 minute video. To me, that's totally inadequate when you're talking about protecting somebody from a potentially deadly disease like Ebola or a disease, like drug resistant TB. I think about Laura Hopkins and I have permission to use her name, she was a PEF member and a nurse, and she was infected in that incident, I talked about at the beginning of the program, and out of work for two and a half years and had to be flown from Upstate New York to the Denver Jewish Respiratory Hospital to have part of her lung removed.

And her family wouldn't see her because they were afraid. So, I think, if we value workers and we really respect workers, then we will take the time to give them meaningful and appropriate and interactive and training that'll really, I think that'll make a huge, huge difference. And I think the NIEHS materials and also the materials of all the grantees are a really rich resource that the listeners to this show should tap into.

Jill:

Yeah, I agree. And I will include all of those in the show notes. So everyone who's listening, be sure to check those out so you can go to the resources that Jonathan's talking about.

Jonathan:

There's also a list on the Clearinghouse website of all the grantees. And if you go to, if you look up their website, you can see the programs that they offer. Some of it is because of the federal funding, it's either free or very cheap. The mainstay is, has whopper training and hazardous materials training, and OSHA training and confined space, things like that. But they've ventured into resilience and opioids and now, infectious diseases.

Jill:

Fabulous, Jonathan. Thank you so much for sharing. First of all, thank you for doing the work that you're doing. Thank you for having that mind that got up at 5:30 in the morning and wanted to read through all those journals. I think you set yourself up well for what you've been doing in support of the worker training program all these years. It's incredible work and it's so important. Thank you so much.

Jonathan:

Well, thank you for thanking me. I appreciate it.

Jill:

No, it's just, it's phenomenal. And I hope people take advantage of the training that you've created in partnership with everyone else. Dear podcast listeners, a special note for this episode, which I recorded after Jonathan and I ended our recording session, since early March, the NIEHS has held weekly and sometimes twice weekly workshops sharing information, training and stories from researchers, scientists, hospitals, unions, health and safety experts from all over the United States. They are sharing information for all of us, as we learn more and more about this novel virus and how we can protect the workforce.

The workshops are chocked full of intense, critical information. The recordings of those workshops are also available to you, and I'll share them with you in the show notes of this episode. At the end of the workshops each week, we have a moment of reflection and calm. We are all, all of us, everyone listening now, working our hearts out to keep our workforce protected. And we're all tired. And I bet you are too.

And it's important that we spend some time renewing so that we can each keep going. So to that end, the weekly NIEHS workshops and every session with a guided meditation, and sometimes a song. Imagine that. On one particular day, Jonathan and Annie, who is Jonathan's wife, ended our workshop with a song. After Jonathan and I ended the recording of this particular session, he and Annie sang into my ears, the same song that they had performed weeks earlier in one of the workshops to remind us that we're all in this together. So Jonathan left, the recording picked up his guitar and he and Annie sang John Lennon's imagine.

It was a beautiful gift that required me to use three tissues. I wish I could share it with you. However, copyright laws being what they are and appropriately so, we can't. So I encourage you however, to take a moment of stillness now, after you're finished listening here and perhaps search for Lennon's song, imagine, and listen to it and let yourself regenerate for just a moment and imagine all the people sharing in this together. So thank you. Thank you all for what you're doing and until next time, thanks for listening.