Uwe Reischl was selected a finalist for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) 2022 Alice Hamilton Award. The selection was based on Reischl’s a 2020 collaboration with NIOSH researchers in Morgantown, West Virginia. The award recognizes researchers who completed innovative research projects in the fields of engineering controls, behavioral health, epidemiology and surveillance, exposure risk assessment and laboratory science.
The collaborative project was based on work performed one year earlier in the Department of Public Health and Population Science involving a novel helmet air-bag technology that can reduce neck injuries and concussions due to excessive impact forces on football helmets.
The results of the NIOSH project were published in the Journal of Bio-medical Materials and Engineering titled “Application of polyethylene air-bubble cushions to improve the shock absorption performance of Type I construction helmets for repeated impacts.” (Bio-medical Materials and Engineering 32(6):1-14). Boise State University and NIOSH submitted a joint patent application for this technology.
The award is named after Alice Hamilton, MD, who is considered the “mother” of modern occupational medicine. Her investigations into industrial diseases in the early 1900’s established the relevance of public health to industrial working conditions. Her achievements created the impetus to establish the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in 1970 with a mandate to assure “every man and woman in the Nation safe and healthful working conditions.” NIOSH is part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.