HFES President’s Message - October 24, 2024

by Camille Peres, HFES President

Happy National Ergonomics Month (NEM)! This is an opportunity for us all to promote the science and application of human factors and ergonomics. Have you participated yet in the National Ergonomics Month Social Media Challenge? If so, tell us about it! If not, jump on in!! I know I’ve seen lots of stuff on LinkedIn that would qualify, I hoped you’re submitting these! One thing that is encouraging is the number of sites external to HFES who have posts about NEM. Here are just a few from the past years:

2024:

• Texas Department of Insurance
• Berkely Lab - Environmental Health and Safety
• North Carolina State ErgoCenter 

2023:

• University of California San Francisco - Environmental Health and Safety

2022:  

• Stanford Environmental Health and Safety; NIOSH Science Blog

This is great but certainly we can do better and have the entire first page of a google search filled with NEM sites next year! Can your organization be part of this? Let’s remind people that Ergonomics is absolutely about Health and Safety AND it is about efficiency and effectiveness. This means that it helps to meet the bottom line not only through reduced health care cost but also through increased throughput.

It is also Breast Cancer Awareness Month! One is eight women in the U.S will have a breast cancer diagnosis in their lifetime (National Breast Cancer Foundation). That is a staggering statistic to me. I think of all the women I know and love and this can be frightening. Like many of you, my life has been touched by this disease. My maternal grandmother died from it and my mother is (thankfully) a 30+ year survivor of it. I have had countless friends and family members who are survivors and one dear niece who was taken too soon from us because of it. All cancers are terrible, and this is the month we look to those struggling with this form of cancer. As HF/E professionals, we can use our science, application, and practice to improve the diagnosis and treatment of this disease and possibly even support those who are looking to prevent it. Are you working on HFE work associated with Breast Cancer? Tell us your story! Post it in HFES Connect or in LinkedIn or both! Let’s turn our page PINK!!!

Lastly, I was to share again opportunities for all of you to contribute to the 2025 HFES ASPIRE meeting in Chicago!!! HFES leadership is working tirelessly to improve our transparency, and towards that effort, I sent a video providing feedback on some of the concerns HFES members were having regarding ASPIRE. I realized later that the transcription didn’t work (sigh) and that it was probably too long (yes, I’m not a digital native) so I’ll be remaking the content to accommodate both of those in the next couple of days. In the meantime, here is the link to the 10-minute version: Feedback on ASPIRE to membership-small.mp4. In this video, I talk about the opportunities to provide feedback. Here is the page to login to communication events (no registration is necessary) HFES ASPIRE Planning Meetings. Hope to see you there!!!