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September,
2003
(From
COEH newsletter, Bridges)
Student
Journalists Inform Teens
About Health and Safety
Winners of a statewide high school
journalism contest have received prizes for stories alerting teenagers
about protecting their health
and safety at work, as part of a public awareness campaign organized
by COEH's Labor Occupational Health Program (LOHP).
The Young
Workers public awareness campaign, now in its fifth year, celebrates "Safe
Jobs for Youth Month" each May. This
year, in conjunction with the celebration, LOHP and its partners,
including the Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program at the
UCLA COEH and 20 other partner organizations from state and federal
government, labor, and industry, invited journalism students to
write stories for their school papers about health and safety on
the job. Students in 30 high schools across the state submitted
published entries for the contest.
"We are very excited about these articles and
the response from high school journalists and their advisers," said
Young Workers Project Coordinator Diane Bush of LOHP. "Our
approach to reaching teens is to give them a chance to hear from
their peers about health
and safety issues. They tend to take these things more seriously
when they hear about them from their peers. The stories that appeared
had the potential to inform as many as 30,000 teenagers throughout
California."
Winners
First
prize winner, Rachel Khong, feature editor of The
Bull's Eye at
Diamond Bar High School
in Diamond
Bar, won $400 and received
$300 for her school
paper. Second place winners, Arie Eernisse of Troy High School
in Fullerton, and Shuyi (Shirley) Man of University High School
in Los Angeles, received $300 for themselves and $200 for their
school papers. Their health and
safety stories may be found online at
www.youngworkers.org.
Read
the first prize winner's story. (PDF file)
The
winners were selected by a team of judges that included a reporter
from the Sacramento Bee, the
communications director
for the California Department of
Industrial Relations, occupational
health educators, and a high school
journalism adviser. The State Compensation Insurance Fund contributed
the prizes for the contest.
The
Young Workers public awareness campaign is supported by the Commission
on Health and Safety
and
Workers' Compensation.
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