Rutgers School of Public Health’s Mitchel Rosen Receives APHA Lifetime Achievement Award

Mitchel A. Rosen, professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and Justice and director of the Center for Public Health Workforce Development at the Rutgers School of Public Health, has been named a recipient of the Alice Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Public Health Association’s Occupational Health and Safety Section.

The award recognizes people who have spent their careers improving the health and safety of workers. Named for Alice Hamilton, widely considered the founder of occupational health in the United States, the award honors a lifetime of service, science, and advocacy on behalf of working people.

For Rosen, that work has been going on for nearly four decades.

Since 1988, he has managed training for more than 1 million workers in occupational safety and health, environmental health, and public health education. At Rutgers, he has helped build programs that prepare workers, first responders, public health professionals, and others to address the hazards they face on the job—and to meet new public health challenges as they emerge.

“I have focused on bringing students to workplaces so that they see and understand how workers are impacted by their work,” said Rosen. “Alice Hamilton conducted site visits over 100 years ago to understand exposures, and I find it a big part of my work now. So, to receive the Alice Hamilton Award from the Occupational Health and Safety Section of APHA is an incredible honor.”

Rosen’s work has covered a lot of ground: hazardous materials, emergency preparedness, workplace safety, environmental health, disaster response, and public health workforce development. The Center for Public Health Workforce Development, which he leads, also provides training in areas ranging from OSHA standards and hazardous waste to heat illness prevention, respiratory protection, asbestos and lead safety, mental health and resiliency, and other workplace health issues.

But much of Rosen’s career has focused on something fairly straightforward: making sure training actually helps people at work.

His research examines how education and training change workplace practices, while his broader efforts have focused on building public health capacity and reaching workers and communities that may otherwise have limited access to health and safety information. 

Rosen currently serves as principal investigator for several major workforce training programs, including the Atlantic Center for Occupational Health and Safety Training, funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; the Continuing and Outreach Education Program for the NY/NJ Education and Research Center, funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; and the Region 2 Public Health Training Center, funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration.

“Dr. Rosen has spent his career advancing public health in ways that improve people’s lives, meeting people where they are, in their workplaces, their communities, and in the moments when they need us most,” said Perry N. Halkitis, dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health. “At the heart of his work is a fundamental understanding that public health is, first and foremost, about people. Through his extraordinary commitment to education, mentorship, and worker health and safety, he has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. This recognition is incredibly well deserved.”

The American Public Health Association noted Rosen’s longstanding commitment to worker health and safety through service, partnership, and mentorship, as well as the reach of the programs he has built and led over the course of his career.

Rosen will receive the Alice Hamilton Award alongside Katherine Kirkland, DrPH, longtime executive director of the Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics. Both will be honored during APHA’s 154th Annual Meeting & Expo, taking place November 1–4, 2026, in San Antonio, Texas.

Rosen earned his Master of Science in public health education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and his PhD from Rutgers University’s Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.