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Volunteer firefighters face obstacles to maintain fitness including time constraints from firefighting duties, work, and personal responsibilities. However, they recognize the necessity of being physically fit to optimize firefighting performance and health. Incorporating fitness into department activities and training may help overcome these challenges and promote fitness. Objective: To describe volunteer firefighters' perspectives on how firefighter- and fire department–level factors influence their physical activity and fitness. Methods: Firefighters (n = 28) were interviewed, stratified by their years of firefighting, using an interview guide. Thematic analysis and systematic coding were used to analyze the interview transcripts. Results: Five themes were identified: (1) health and firefighting performance, (2) firefighter time and availability, (3) responsibility of the fire department to support volunteer members' physical fitness, (4) fire training drills as a form of functional physical activity, and (5) fitness initiatives at the department. Interviewing by years of experience showed varied perspectives that converged toward similar conclusions. Conclusions: Incorporating fitness discussions into department meetings and trainings and identifying fitness advocates within the department may contribute to overcoming barriers to physical fitness among volunteer firefighters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: New Jersey (NJ) Safe Schools Program, primarily funded by the NJ Department of Education, has aims concerning safety and health including helping to alleviate harassment, intimidation, and bullying (HIB) in secondary school because HIB can affect learning. We evaluated officially reported adolescent HIB total incidents and estimated rates in NJ public city and county school districts for the 2011-2016 school years. Methods: A cross-sectional observational study using population-based state-reported public data. We calculated point prevalence and incidence rates for K-12 students in 22 public city school districts, students in 21 career-technical-vocational education (CTE) school districts, and 8 special services school districts during 2011-2016. Results: HIB is prevalent in NJ school classrooms. HIB comprised [greater than or equal to] 75% of total officially reported in-school violence-related incidents in a given school year. Rates per 100 enrollees of total officially reported incidents for the 5-year period of 2011-2016 was highest in special services school districts (5.00; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 4.67, 5.34) followed by CTE districts (1.94; 95% CI: 1.86, 2.01), and lowest in city districts (1.46; 95% CI: 1.44, 1.48). The special services school district also had the highest rates per year and the 5-year period. Conclusions: Data analyses suggested ideas for further research and improvements for school HIB incident reports. Policies and programs could remedy issues observed in state secondary school classrooms. Best practices within districts and schools can help protect students from HIB and promote safety, health, learning, and maturation.

This 2017-2019 project started with a systematic assessment of three independent environmental and occupational health-related doctoral (PhD) programs, which are sponsored by different agencies, institutes, and schools within Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey: Exposure Science, Toxicology, and Environmental Health. In addition, we examined other graduate and undergraduate environment-related schools, departments, divisions, and institutes with degree programs (majors and minors) and certificate programs at Rutgers. Then, we conducted a survey of students. Data collected can result in enhancements to connections between entities, with multiple potential benefits. For example, for Rutgers School of Public Health, data can inform efforts to increase student applications to both master's and doctoral programs, as well as increase faculty participation in teaching and student advising. The project should result in more qualified student applications from students in their final year of master's programs. Subsequently, acceptances into and matriculations from PhD programs should also increase. Overall, this approach should provide more continuity of scholarship at schools, institutes and/or other environmental programs at Rutgers. In summary, this project's data can help support positive yet complex relationships across engaged entities at Rutgers and inform other U.S. environmental health programs., Introduction In 2003, following publication and release of Healthy People 2010 public health objectives, which included aspects of environmental health (EH), a revitalization strategy for essential EH services was published [...]