All Hail “Local Hero”
Winning Idea in the AIHA Breakthrough Thinking Competition Proposes IH Marketing Campaign
in Developing World
BY ED RUTKOWSKI
Imagine a time in the not-so-distant future when trained industrial hygienists are plentiful in the developing world. Communities hold hygienists in such high regard that hey come to symbolize “help,” much the way doctors do today. Locally-trained hygienists feel such a strong con- nection to their communities that they pass up higher-
paying jobs in the western world to remain with the
workers who have the greatest need for their serv-
ices. Most importantly, increasing numbers of
workers who today experience severe expo-
sures to a horde of unregulated substances
come home safe and well every night. Work-
related illnesses and fatalities are receding
everywhere.
If such a future comes to pass, it may be due in part to a
social marketing campaign that promotes industrial hygiene in
the developing world. This idea is at the heart of “Local Hero,”
the winning proposal in AIHA’s Breakthrough Thinking Competition. This month, Jason Hoffman, CIH, the representative of the
team that proposed Local Hero at AIHce 2009 in Toronto, will
present the idea to the AIHA Board of Directors at PCIH in Vancouver. The idea has won praise from judges and competitors
alike for its novel approach to one of the most intractable problems facing the industrial hygiene profession: how to increase
the number of practicing industrial hygienists in places undergoing rapid industrialization.
Constructive Competition
Hoffman first learned about the Breakthrough Thinking Competition from the Final Program for AIHce 2009 in Toronto. The
idea intrigued him: AIHA was holding a “constructive competition” modeled on the X Prize, a series of technological and scientific challenges that draws competitors with the promise of large
rewards. The first X Prize of $10 million was awarded in 2004 to a
team that constructed a private spacecraft.
Intended to do for industrial hygiene what the X Prize had done
for space flight, the AIHA Breakthrough Thinking Competition invited
conference attendees to propose solutions to two problems facing
