To UTHSC Faculty and Staff: The Health Science Center campus has recently initiated a review of the Office of Safety Affairs and their operations. The purpose of this effort is to have an independent review of the office’s compliance-related functions and scope of responsibilities, as well as to obtain recommendations on the appropriate reporting structure and level of resources required to ensure optimal adherence in safety, health and environmental compliance-related functions and responsibilities that will provide optimal support to the UTHSC community.
The external consulting firm of Environmental Health & Engineering, Inc. (EH&E) will lead this initiative. The project will begin with comprehensive assessment, which includes document reviews, questionnaires, interviews, a site visit (8/25 to 8/29), and benchmarking relative to other institutions and best practices.
To ensure the assessment is as comprehensive as possible, we will solicit the perspectives of numerous stakeholders during the review process. A random sample of HSC employees will receive an email from EH&E during the week of August 25th containing an embedded link directing them to the “UTHSC Safety Survey.” In order to ensure that our consultants have the most relevant data for this review, we need your participation in this questionnaire process and, therefore, we strongly encourage you to complete this survey.
Please note that at no time will the individual identities of respondents be associated with the questionnaire responses as summarized and reported back to UTHSC. Thus, we ask you to be as honest, candid, and complete as possible in your responses.
We are optimistic that the Safety Affairs program review will bring both challenges and opportunities to light. We look forward to working together with our campus safety organization to build upon its current strengths.
Questions about the comprehensive Safety Affairs review process can be directed to my office or to the Office of Safety Affairs.
Kennard D. Brown, JD, MPA, PhD, FACHE
Executive Vice Chancellor & Chief Operations Officer