
NIOSH To Move Deeper into the Bowels of Government
by Guest Blogger, 7/26/2004
Five former NIOSH and MSHA administrators sent a letter to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson last week to protest the Center for Disease Control's plan to move the National Institute for Occupational Safety deeper into the bureaucracy of the CDC.
The CDC's new
reorganization plan includes the decision to cluster NIOSH with
several environmental health agencies into the Coordinating Center for
Environmental Health, Injury Prevention, and Occupational Health, one of
four coordinating centers that will report directly to the CDC
administrator.
The former administrators were joined by a wide range of individuals
and organizations, including the United Auto Workers, American Association
of Occupational Health Nurses, American Industrial Hygiene Association,
AFL-CIO, and the NIOSH Board of Scientific Counselors, who charged that the
move will curtail NIOSH's autonomy, undermine its influence on regulation,
and perhaps impact its budget. Furthermore, concern was raised that the
move fails to meet the intent of Congress as set out in the Occupational
Safety and Health Act. "Clustering NIOSH with a number of environmental
health programs would undo the intent of Congress and place it essentially
where it was thirty-four years ago," the board members of NIOSH's Board of
Scientific Counselors stated in a letter to CDC Director Julie
Gerberding.
NIOSH was established by the
href="http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owasrch.search_form?p_doc_type=OSHACT&p_toc_level=0&p_keyvalue=">Occupational Safety
and Health Act of 1970 as a separate institute that reported directly to
the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare with the mission "to conduct
research, experiments, and demonstrations, develop plans, establish criteria,
promulgate regulations, authorize programs, and publish results and industrywide
studies." President Gerald Ford later moved NIOSH under the CDC, even though
occupational health and safety has very little to do with the CDC's primary
goals of disease control and prevention. Moving NIOSH deeper into the CDC would
only further de-emphasize the agency's importance, visibility and autonomy.
Read Some Letters Opposing the Reorganization of NIOSH:
- href="http://www.aaohn.org/public_policy/in_action/letters/CDC_Reorg_AAOHN _Response.cfm">American Association of Occupational Health Nurses Letter
- American Society of Safety Engineers Letter
- href="http://list.mc.duke.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0407&L=occ-env-med-l&F=&S=& P=7977">AFL-CIO Letter
