BY WENDY HUNTER

An amazing life can touch many, even after it has ended. Important accomplishments, kindness bestowed and fortitude of spirit can breach the grave and continue to affect and influence the living. One woman who lived such a life was Joyce Simonowitz.

I first became aware of Joyce when my boss, Dr. John Froines, director of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, told me that he and the center’s faculty members wanted to establish a student award in honor of an important occupational health nurse who had recently died. The award, named after Joyce, would go to a second-year nursing student interested in occupational and environmental health (OEH). Joyce believed strongly in her work as a mentor, and all agreed she would have favored such an award. It became my duty to create a tribute document for Joyce. It was here that our lives intersected.

Joyce died in August 2002, at age 67, after a four-month battle with brain cancer. She spent 40 years as a nurse, including 25 productive years with Cal/OSHA. Her work there focused on creating a safer work environment for all members of California’s workforce. Prior to the early ’90s, the issue of violence in the workplace was not seen as an occupational health issue, but rather a fact of life. After hearing about an incident where a social worker was shot by a disturbed patient, Joyce wrote guidelines in 1993 for Cal/OSHA to protect health-care and community service workers. This document contributed to the beginning of a movement requiring employers to take responsibility for installing safeguards, such as panic buttons, adequate lighting and bulletproof glass, among other security devices.

We here at UCLA also directly benefited from Joyce’s career. Joyce was a member of a number of advisory boards and spent time mentoring students. Each year she spoke to graduate students, helping to familiarize them with the issues they would soon be encountering as OEH professionals.

One former student told me that she decided to remain in OEH nursing after hearing Joyce speak about her career with Cal/OSHA. Joyce was able to illustrate the breadth of the field with her words and convinced the woman that it was a worthy career path. The student is currently an OEH nurse for a major corporation here in Los Angeles.

The more I talked with students and administrators who knew her, the more deeply I felt the scope and impact of the legacy Joyce left behind, a legacy that continues to affect those whose lives she changed and a multitude of workers she had not met.

For those reasons and many more, the Joyce Simonowitz Memorial Award has been established to honor a truly extraordinary person.

Hunter is research and outreach manager for the Southern California Particle Center and Supersite and the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, School of Public Health. For more information on the award, e-mail: whunter@ucla.edu or call (310) 794-5980.