The AHE awards and recognition program acknowledges and elevates professionals who have demonstrated the highest level of excellence and leadership. Award recipients are those who work towards advocating and educating themselves on best practices and standards, developing new leaders within a hospital or healthcare facility, and promoting the environmental services profession.

Applications are due June 9, 2017.

AHE has started this initiative to encourage professionals in the field to begin, or continue to refer to the departments and the personnel caring for the healthcare environment as environmental services professionals rather than as housekeepers, janitors and custodians. The staff and management teams responsible for maintaining the clinical environment of care require different skills and competencies from those needed in the commercial cleaning and general maintenance industry and it's time we address this critical distinction.

Please help us redefine healthcare environmental services!

Jamie Morgan, Health Facilities Management
Come this fall, The Ohio State University will launch a first-of-its-kind program to train the next generation of health care environmental services leaders.

CleanLink
With the help of germ-killing UV robots, Chesapeake Regional Healthcare (CRH) saw a 12 percent decrease in its Clostridium difficile (C.diff) infection rates, according to an article on the Cleanzine website.

Cheryl McMullen, Waste 360
The Partner for Change Award recognizes health care facilities that continuously improve and expand upon programs to eliminate mercury, reduce and recycle waste, source products sustainably and more.

Ronnie Garrett, CleanLink
Cleaning is not sanitizing. Sanitizing is not disinfecting. Although the terms are often used synonymously, there is a significant difference among the three.

Infection Control Today
World Hand Hygiene Day, marked globally on May 5, highlights the importance of hand hygiene in healthcare.

Brian Zimmerman, Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality
Researchers from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., have developed paper-based sanitizers that could one day be used to create bandages that promote healing and eliminate bacteria among other novel products, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Infection Control Today
Even a relatively mild Zika outbreak in the United States could cost more than $183 million in medical costs and productivity losses, suggests a computational analysis led by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers, while a more severe one could result in $1.2 billion or more in medical costs and productivity losses.

Einav Keet, Contagion Live
With now only 10 states reporting widespread flu activity, a recently released study examines how the delivery methods of the influenza vaccine can be optimized.

Rodger Dean Duncan
After four decades of observing and coaching leaders, I’ve heard thousands of definitions of leadership.

Marcel Schwantes, Inc.
Sometimes the only way you'll truly know whether a leader's skills are genuine is to measure the manager that made your life miserable against the one that had you thinking often, "This is too good to be true."

By Ed Barr, CHESP

By Lisa Ford, CHESP

Make yourself indispensable and advance your career! Plan your education for 2017. Visit AHE’s 2017 ENGAGE site to learn more about educational courses, podcasts, webinars, and events. And make sure to check out AHE's EXPRESS Learning Courses. EXPRESS is a mobile learning platform that offers educational podcasts delivered by environmental services and infection prevention thought leaders. You asked for learning opportunities that require less of a time commitment and we delivered!

The AHE Seal of Review and Recognition Program is designed to be a comprehensive review and formalized recognition process aimed at assisting healthcare professionals in selecting training and in-service programs that promote quality, safety and the most favorable outcomes for the healthcare environment and its related disciplines.