2023 Director's Safety and Health Achievement Awards (U.S. National Park Service)

The Director's Safety and Health Achievement Awards are the highest awards bestowed by the National Park Service (NPS) for outstanding visitor safety and employee safety and health achievements.

The Director's Safety and Health Achievement Awards recognize significant achievements in the cultivation of a safe and healthful work environment for employees.

The Director's Visitor Safety Achievement Awards recognize significant achievements in reducing hazards or behaviors that either increase the risk of or result in visitor injuries, both fatal and non-fatal, and improving visitor injury outcomes.

Director’s Safety and Health Achievement Awards

Individual Recipient: Lieutenant Commander Sarah Maynard

Lieutenant Commander (LCDR) Sarah Maynard exhibited tremendous leadership skills focused on enhancing health and safety through her commitment to take on the extra responsibility of chairing the safety, health, and wellness committee for her 26-person team. This focused effort led to the development of a safety, health, and wellness plan that will support all public health officers in safely conducting their work across the NPS. Throughout the year, LCDR Maynard provided training and focused on culture building with her team to elevate the importance of openly sharing best practices to mitigate risk in the work environment and foster the team's focus on continuous improvement. LCDR Maynard’s efforts show strong commitment to employee safety and health and foster a stronger commitment among all staff involved in the efforts described here.

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Duration:: 1 minute

Lieutenant Commander Sarah Maynard accepts the 2023 Director’s Safety and Health Achievement Individual Award.

Capitol Reef National Park's Employee Safety Committee — Award recipients from the Employee Safety Committee at Capitol Reef National Park.
NPS

Group Recipient: Capitol Reef National Park Employee Safety Committee

The Capitol Reef National Park (CARE) Employee Safety Committee, comprised of employees who took on additional responsibilities outside their normal work duties, worked together to develop and oversee a park-wide comprehensive safety week. The planning included engaging with park leadership to share strong leader's intent for employee safety and health. The safety week included providing training on a wide range of safety and health topics relevant to the park setting and enhancing understanding of the importance of incident reporting and the process of continuous improvement. The week also recognized employee safety contributions and demonstrated how proactive risk assessment and risk mitigation contributes to good processes to enable employees to work safely. The work of the CARE Employee Safety Committee fostered strong and positive safety culture development that will have lasting impacts on the employees at CARE.

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Duration:: 1 minute, 58 seconds

Members of Capitol Reef National Park Employee Safety Committee accept the 2023 Director’s Safety and Health Achievement Group Award.

Director’s Visitor Safety Achievement Awards

Individual Recipient: Anna Marini

Anna Marini, Preventative Search and Rescue (PSAR) Coordinator at Joshua Tree National Park (JOTR) is selected for the Director's Visitor Safety Achievement Award for her outstanding dedication, commitment, and achievements to reducing risk to visitors and preventing serious and fatal visitor injuries. During fiscal year 2023, Ranger Marini expanded the JOTR PSAR program to address increased heat injuries affecting visitors that were leading to an increase in search and rescue operations at the park. Ranger Marini recruited and trained 30 new volunteers to rove park trails providing safety messages, heat illness prevention tips, trail information, and more. She also consolidated the Trail Rovers program into the PSAR to streamline training and communications for trail operations.

Under her leadership, the PSAR program logged 3,100 volunteer hours, contacted 83,700 park visitors during 566 patrols, and documented 13,200 preventative actions where volunteers directly altered unsafe visitor behavior through face-to-face education. She represented JOTR on multiple media interviews and filmed two videos for social media sharing important visitor safety messages to the public. She also contributed to a national effort to develop two position descriptions for dedicated PSAR positions in national parks.

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Duration:: 1 minute, 25 seconds

Anna Marini accepts the 2023 Director’s Visitor Safety Achievement Individual Award.

Group Recipient: Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River Water Safety Committee

The Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River (UPDE) Water Safety Committee is selected for the group Director’s Visitor Safety Achievement Award for their exceptional efforts to reduce drownings in 2023. The UPDE Water Safety Committee focused their efforts to develop targeted water safety messages to high-risk populations and in multiple languages, including Spanish, to reflect the diversity of visitors at the park. The UPDE Water Safety Committee worked with the Upper Delaware Council to install new billboards on major local roadways and multi-language posters incorporating messages to resonate with their audience on the importance of wearing life jackets. They developed water safety videos in English and Spanish with support from the Pocono Television Network. They partnered closely with commercial use authorization holders on the river incorporating input and suggestions to improve upon and expand messaging to visitors.