Occupational and Environmental Medicine Program – UCI

Overview

The Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the UC Irvine School of Medicine is committed to providing exemplary care for the prevention, evaluation, and treatment of occupational and environmental health conditions. The Division is a core program of the UC Irvine Center for Occupational and Environmental Health.

The Center operates an Occupational and Environmental Medicine consulting clinic, which serves as a referral center for the evaluation of occupational and environmental exposures in Southern California. Our physicians are also highly skilled at performing medical and fitness evaluations for employees of businesses and organizations.

Division faculty members are nationally and internationally recognized for fostering basic, clinical and translational research in the field of occupational and environmental health. We are experts in occupational and environmental epidemiology, toxicology, and occupational health issues.

We are also committed to training physicians and scientists for careers in occupational and environmental health. The Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine has one of the most competitive ACGME-accredited occupational medicine training programs in the country. Graduates of our program constitute a core of the occupational medicine specialists in Southern California and are leaders in corporate occupational medicine and public health practices. Upon completion of our program, residents are prepared for the comprehensive practice of occupational medicine in a variety of settings, including private clinical practices, managed health care organizations, corporate medical departments, public health programs, and legal or regulatory agencies.

Our division also has extensive research programs, which provide medical students, graduate students and residents with unique opportunities to address important topics in the laboratories as well as in the field. We have one of the top programs in the country for researching work organizations. Beyond identifying safety hazards such as lead and asbestos, our researchers work to analyze the cardiovascular effects of occupational stress, including the way work is structured and the intensity of work demands on employees. Other major research topics include reproductive and developmental toxicology, neurotoxicology, occupational health psychology, and children’s environmental health.

It is our mission to train the best scientists and clinicians, to make new contributions through research and to provide the best care for our patients.

Occupational Medicine Residency Program

The Occupational Medicine Residency Program is the core teaching program of the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in the School of Medicine at UC Irvine.

Established in 1976, the residency program has graduated more than 80 physicians. They constitute the core of the practicing occupational medicine specialists in Southern California and many are leaders in corporate occupational medicine and public health practice across the region. The residency program’s long-term collaboration with occupational medicine practitioners and other programs throughout the area offers a rich source of training experiences and expertise for our residents.

The Occuaptional Medicine Residency program benefits from its location in Orange County, a major population center with more than 3 million people, and the greater Southern California area. The program’s regional emphasis gives our residents access to training opportunities in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties.

The residency is a component of the Southern California Education and Research Center, which is jointly run at UCLA and UC Irvine, and is funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and provides support for resident stipends.

The Occupational Medicine Residency program is designed as a two-year training experience consisting of integrated clinical, academic, and practicum training with ongoing core residency training activities. As part of this program, we offer a Master’s of Science degree in Environmental Health Sciences and require our residents to complete a research thesis. The residency provides extensive didactic core lectures, seminars and a journal club in environmental and occupational medicine. In addition, our residents complete rotations at a range of field training sites — including workplace-based programs — to gain hands-on experience managing occupational health issues.

The program does not provide an initial clinical training year. Consequently, entering residents must have completed at least one year in an ACGME-accredited clinical residency program and be licensed to practice medicine in the state of California.

The program also considers candidate physicians who have completed an ACGME-accredited clinical residency and obtained a Master’s of Public Health degree or the equivalent from an accredited institution. These residents may be admitted directly into a 12 month practicum training program.

Occupational & Environmental Medicine Program

Ulrike Luderer, MD, PhD, MPH – Director, Center for Occupational and Environmental Health
Dean B. Baker, MD, MPH
Wayne Chang, MD, MS – Medical Director, UCI Medical Center Occupational Health
Marnie Dobson, PhD
Joseph Fedoruk, MD – Medical Director, COEH OEM Clinic
Scott Hardy, MD
Alya Khan, MD, MS – OM Residency Director
Peter L. Schnall, MD, MPH
Haiou Yang, PhD

Environmental Health Sciences Program

Graduate Program in Environmental Health Science

The UC Irvine Center for Occupational and Environmental Health and Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine provides training in Environmental Health Sciences, culminating with the award of the Master’s of Science degree or Doctor of Philosophy degree in one of two tracks, Environmental Toxicology and Exposure Science and Risk Assessment. The program is jointly sponsored by the UC Irvine Program in Public Health.

The Environmental Health Sciences program provides students with the knowledge and skills necessary and appropriate to teach and/or conduct basic and applied research programs in inhalation/pulmonary toxicology, biochemical neurotoxicology, reproductive and developmental toxicology, chemical pathology, toxicokinetics, radiation toxicology, molecular carcinogenesis, environmental epidemiology, exposure sciences and risk assessment.

Toxicology involves the scientific study of the entry, distribution, biotransformation and mechanism of the action of chemical agents that are harmful to the body. The graduate program interprets environmental toxicology as the study of the effects and mechanisms of action of hazardous chemicals in food, air, water and soil in the home, the workplace and the community. It also considers experimentally and theoretically such diverse research problems as:

New scientific approaches to toxicological evaluation of environmental chemicals such as air and water pollutants, food additives, industrial wastes and agricultural adjuvants at the molecular, cellular and organism levels;
New approaches to the evaluation of human exposures to environmental chemicals;
Mechanisms of action in chemical toxicity;
The molecular pathology of tissue injury in acute toxicity;
Scientific principles involved in evaluating risks to human health from environmental exposures.