New Center Leads Collaborative Research to Improve Firefighter Health
Researchers will study firefighter occupational health risks to help inform decisions, practices and policies to improve firefighter safety and health.
The new Center for Firefighter Health Collaborative Research in the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona Health Sciences will allow researchers to expand their work with firefighters and fire departments to study the occupational health risks firefighters face. Jefferey L. Burgess, MD, MS, MPH, is a professor in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and a member of the SWEHSC.
The center, recently approved by the University of Arizona Office of Research, Innovation and Impact, builds on years of firefighter health research conducted by Zuckerman College of Public Health faculty in close collaboration with fire departments. Some of that research has already had a positive impact on firefighter health, including helping inform the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s decision to classify occupational exposure as a firefighter as carcinogenic, changing the previous classification of possibly carcinogenic.