UConn Health Staffer Continues Late Colleague’s Efforts to Protect America’s Workers
2 min read
Donor-funded speaker series will educate physicians on the
importance of Environmental Health.
Many Americans have the late UConn School of Medicine Professor Emerita Eileen Storey, MD, MPH to thank for staying healthy on the job. As one of the creators of the Occupational and Environmental Health medical specialty, Dr. Storey dedicated her career to protecting workers and keeping them safe. Her colleague and friend Paula Schenck, MPH is now ensuring her legacy continues at UConn and beyond.
Sharing Dr. Storey’s Expertise
Schenck, co-founder with Dr. Storey of the Center for Indoor Environments and Health at UConn Health, endowed a fund establishing a speakers series to share Dr. Storey’s knowledge with the next generation of physicians. The series is set to begin this fall.
“One goal I had, and that Eileen refined for me, is for the healthcare industry to be aware of environmental occupational contributors to illness,” Schenck explains. “This speaker series is one way of touching some of those other pieces of the healthcare industry so they can be aware and respond appropriately.”
“It was Eileen’s mission for all healthcare providers to understand that environment and occupation are an important part of a person’s history,” says Dr. Storey’s husband, Dr. George Record. “What I hope Paula’s series can do is not only increase awareness of the importance of occupational health but also encourage medical providers to learn about someone’s work history, which opens a whole new perspective on their medical history and their personhood.”
Continuing a Legacy of Collaboration
Dr. Storey’s expertise was in occupational respiratory diseases, particularly those caused by poor air quality. She worked on cases of black lung among miners, and mold that made schools dangerous for teachers. While at UConn, she and Schenck worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop a guide for physicians on indoor air quality. Dr. Storey was known among her colleagues as someone who was always ready to collaborate and serve as a guide.
“Eileen really stands out as my primary mentor in my career,” says Adam Seidner, MD, MPH, Chief Medical Officer at The Hartford. “I’ve had a lot of mentors, but she really shaped where I am today. She encouraged curiosity I already had some but with any investigation I was involved with I would need certain resources, and she would reach out to UConn and find a lab where I could do the testing I needed to do.”
Dr. Storey’s mentor, Gregory Wagner, MD, adjunct professor of environmental health at Harvard School of Public Health and former director of the Division of Respiratory Disease Studies for the National Institute for Occupational Health (CDC/NIOSH), explains what made her so successful and beloved.
“Her curiosity, her organization skills, and if anything, this is rare, her constancy of purpose, her commitment in all sorts of ways to do well at an individual level for patients and a population level. She also worked at a policy level to figure out how to get things done and stuck with it until they got done.”
