Warm welcome to our new Southern California NIOSH Education and Research Center Director, Dr. Rachael Jones. Dr. Jones began her new position on July 1st and will also serve as Chair of the Environmental Health Sciences Department in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
Dr. Jones joins us from the University of Utah’s Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine where she directed both the Industrial Hygiene Program and the Utah Center for Promotion of Work Equity Research, a NIOSH Center of Excellence for Total Worker Health.
Her research addresses occupational health and industrial hygiene, with a focus on the assessment and prevention of stressors that workers and communities experience, including healthcare workers providing care to patients with infectious diseases. Her work also explores factors responsible for creating and sustaining unhealthy work environments, particularly as experienced by low-wage workers.
She currently serves as chief editor of the Annals of Work Exposures and Health, the renowned peer-reviewed journal of the British Occupational Hygiene Society, and has guest edited the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene. For the latter, she also served for seven years on the Editorial Review Board.
Dr. Jones earned her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Washington, and both her Master of Public Health and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley. She completed her post-doctoral training at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Public Health, where she later served as faculty.
Rachael Jones’ appointment follows Dr. Niklas Krause’s tenure who served as SCERC Director until 2020, and interim Director, Dr. Wendie Robbins. We are excited for the Center’s success in further promoting and positively impacting the region’s occupational health and safety under Dr. Jones’ leadership.
