Yale Occupational and Environmental Medicine Residency Training Program

Project Summary/Abstract The Yale Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM) residency training program, based in the Department of Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, is one of the oldest, most productive, stable and highly regarded occupational medicine residency training programs in the United States, training 66 OEM physicians over the past almost thirty-five years. There is an urgent need for OEM and public health / preventive medicine (PM) trained physicians in multiple settings across the U.S., further highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Yale OEM residency is an integrated two-year NIOSH-funded PM / OEM residency training program that is fully accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), and leads to board eligibility for certification in PM and OEM by the American Board of Preventive Medicine as well as a Master of Public Health (MPH) Degree from the Yale School of Public Health. The program is currently approved for a total of four positions, two per year. Trainees admitted to the program are expected to have completed an initial ACGME accredited residency in an appropriate clinical specialty, typically Internal Medicine or Family Medicine. This NIOSH TPG 5-year renewal proposal describes the Yale OEM residency program. Highlighted are: 1) our success to date in training physicians for OEM careers, 2) our current OEM training program, which is continually evolving to meet changing needs, and 3) our plans for training future OEM physician leaders able to address the substantial challenges U.S. workers and employers will face in the future. The goal of Yale OEM Residency training program is to train physicians to be proficient in all aspects of the practice of occupational and environmental medicine, based on a sound fundamental knowledge of epidemiology, industrial hygiene, biostatistics, toxicology, human and organization behavior, clinical medicine, and evidence-based critical analysis. We train future physician leaders to serve in a range of OEM academic, clinical and public health roles, with a particular focus on developing skills as educators and scientific investigators, in preparation for successful academic careers.