COM Outlook - Winter 2016

32 Nova Southeastern University T o help preventable disasters like this from occurring again, the NSU-COM Institute for Disaster and Emergency Preparedness (IDEP) created Project SEAMIST (South East Area Marine Industry Safety Training) in 2010, which was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) of the National Institutes of Health. “Project SEAMIST provides training so that vessels and seaports can function safely and efficiently, supporting an important economic component of Florida and the Gulf Coast,” said Stephen Grant, Ph.D., primary investigator of the grant and associate professor of public health. As a result of its initial successes, the NIEHS has awarded an initial $590,000 to IDEP and recommended a total award of $4,289,274 over a five-year period (2015–2020) to continue the program and enhance its offerings. $4.29-Million Grant Boosts Marine SafetyTraining During the first five years (2010–2015) of Project SEAMIST, the program developed a set of safety training curricula specifically targeting the unique hazards of the marine industry and environment. It provided 120 training sessions to nearly 3,000 workers throughout the Gulf Coast states (Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi) and Virginia, including law enforcement officers, port workers, safety trainers, vessel operators and crew mem- bers, cruise ship employees, and medical personnel. This new addition to Project SEAMIST is being spearhead- ed by co-collaborator Kristi Messer, M.S.W., M.P.H., IDEP assistant project manager, and assistant professor of public health and disaster and emergency preparedness. Messer developed the complementary Hazardous Material Mari- time Industry Response Training Safety Initiative to enable workers in the industry to reduce injuries and death related to all disasters and emergencies involving hazardous materials. Research/Scholarly COMmunications The Deepwater Horizon (BP) oil spill, which occurred on April 20, 2010, was the largest disaster of its kind in history, as its negative impact on the economy ran in the tens of billions of dollars and caused irreversible damage to the environment. (Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number U45ES019350. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.)