People in the news

Professor Hank Weiss has taken up the post of director of the Injury Prevention Research Unit at New Zealand’s University of Otago. He succeeds Professor John Langley, who will continue to have an association with the unit. Harold B Weiss, MPH, PhD, has moved from the Department of Neurological Surgery and the Center for Injury Research and Control (CIRCL) at the University of Pittsburgh where he has been a member of the faculty since November 1998. He has more than 25 years’ experience in the practice of injury control, including consultation on local projects, working at the state level in Wisconsin, where he directed the injury prevention programme from 1985 to 1989, and, since 1992, in academia. He served as director of CIRCL from November 2002 to February 2008. Dr Weiss was chair of the American Public Health Association’s Injury Control and Emergency Health Services section in 1990 and was president of the Society for Advancement of Violence and Injury Research in 2007.

Inez Moore Tenenbaum has been sworn in as the ninth chairman of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) following her nomination by President Obama and her confirmation by the Senate in June 2009. Ms Tenenbaum has identified three major areas of focus for her approach to serving as chairman. She wants CPSC to be more accessible and transparent to parents and consumers. Ms Tenenbaum will prioritise education and advocacy during her tenure and is committed to enforcing the law and working to keep dangerous imports out of the hands of consumers. She stated “Parents should know that CPSC will improve the standards for toys and durable nursery products to help keep kids safe. We will also create a system that uses third party laboratories, tracking labels, and CPSC staff at major ports, to do our part …