Vanderbilt Occupational Health is observing its 50th anniversary this year, and one of the activities planned is a series of health fairs to take place on Tuesday, March 18, to coincide with the National Academy of Medicine’s observance of national Health Workforce Well-Being Day.
A variety of VUMC resources will be at each location; joining Occupational Health will be representatives from Work/Life Connections-EAP and Health Plus. Depending on the location, representatives from other groups and services, such as MyHealth Bundles, Rooted Community Health (community-supported agriculture) and Pastoral Care, will also be available.
The locations and times for the March 18 health fairs:
- Main Campus: 11 a.m.-1 p.m. on the Medical Center Plaza (in case of rain, the backup location is the third-floor bridge between Light Hall and the Robinson Research Building)
- Vanderbilt Tullahoma-Harton Hospital: 10 a.m.-noon in the private dining room
- Vanderbilt Bedford County Hospital: 1:30-3 p.m. in the first-floor classroom
- Vanderbilt Wilson County Hospital: 11 a.m.-1 p.m. in the Cedars Conference Room
A continuing commitment to employee health
Vanderbilt Occupational Health opened in 1975 and has grown from its beginnings as an employee walk-in clinic to comprehensive services focused on all aspects of employee health. These services include medical care for work-related illness and injury, as well as minor, nonwork-related illnesses. OHS also provides medical surveillance for work-related hazards as well as exposure evaluations, ergonomic assessments, and new employee immunization and screening services.
Occupational Health’s best-known project is the yearly Flulapalooza, the immunization festival that takes place every fall, and which has become a Medical Center tradition. The annual event was originally spearheaded by Melanie Swift, MD, and the Flulapalooza team won an Elevate Team Award in 2018. For the past 10 years, it has been overseen by Catherine Qian, ANP-C, Occupational Health Clinic manager, who has served as its incident commander.
Occupational Health is one of the three main divisions of Health & Wellness, along with Health Plus and Work/Life Connections-EAP.
That concern for the health of employees is a longtime hallmark of Occupational Health, and another is its trailblazing role in empowering advanced practice nurses at Vanderbilt.
Pat Tucker, RN, was the first nurse manager of Occupational Health and the first full-time occupational health nurse at Vanderbilt, and Pat Kinman, RN, joined the service shortly afterward. Tucker managed the clinic and Kinman, with support from physicians and leaders across the organization, worked over the years to add regulatory compliance and employee assistance services. Kinman was awarded a Commodore Award in 2005 in recognition of her service to employees.
Among the physicians who supported and oversaw the work of Occupational Health in addition to other faculty responsibilities were Frank Gluck, MD, Craig Heim, MD, Anderson Spickard Jr., MD, and Lewis Lefkowitz, MD.
Ann Price, MD, was the medical director in the early 1990s and worked with associate vice chancellor for Health Affairs Eugene Fowinkle, MD, to bring a focus on personal health and its impact on the population health of employees.
“The idea of an employer trying to do something about employee health was a pretty new thing,” said Mary Yarbrough, MD, MPH, who came to Vanderbilt in 1994 as the first board-trained occupational health physician and who worked to bring the current structure of Occupational Health into being.
Yarbrough stepped down from her role as executive director of Vanderbilt Health & Wellness in 2023, and Lori Rolando, MD, MPH, who had been director of Occupational Health, stepped into the executive director’s role.
“We want to be the entity that keeps employees safe and healthy at work,” Rolando, who won a Five Pillar Leader Award in 2022, said.
Future
Ana Nobis, MD, MPH, has been at VUMC six years, and became director of Occupational Health when Rolando became executive director of Health & Wellness.
“I want us to be a reliable source of health and comfort as people go about their busy days,” she said. “I also want us to be known as the friendliest clinic on campus.”
Nobis, the daughter of immigrants who, as she was growing up, frequently traveled to Peru and Costa Rica, was influenced by seeing some of the effects on health of poor working conditions in those countries. She was drawn to a career in occupational medicine partly due to those experiences.
As VUMC has added new locations and new hospitals, the role of Occupational Health has expanded to those locations, and Nobis said that emphasis will continue.
She said a goal is to have a full-time Occupational Health physician or nurse practitioner based at each of Vanderbilt Health’s Regional Hospitals, and also to expand services into later hours and weekend, in acknowledgment of the 24-hours-a-day nature of health care.
“Injuries don’t stop at 5 o’clock,” she noted. “I like to emphasize the ‘you,’ as in ‘OccYOUpational Health,’” she said.
Rolando noted that, as a specialty, occupational medicine is relatively new, and that even some people considering a medical career may not be aware of what it has to offer. Rolando herself trained and practiced as a surgeon before changing specialties.
“It is so rewarding,” she said of occupational medicine. “It is very rewarding to take care of the people who are taking care of everybody else.”
