The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration awarded approximately $10.2 million in Susan Harwood Training Grants to 67 organizations nationwide, the agency announced October 1, 2026, to fund hazard-recognition and prevention training for workers and employers.
Focus on High-Risk Small Businesses
The grants, distributed through OSHA’s long-running Susan Harwood Training Grant Program, are intended to support instructor-led training and the development of classroom-ready educational materials on hazard awareness, prevention and controls. OSHA said the funding places particular emphasis on small businesses operating in industries with high rates of injury, illness and fatality, and that roughly a dozen of the awards are specifically earmarked for fall-protection training aimed at residential and commercial construction workers in states including Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Program’s Origins
The program is named for Dr. Susan Harwood, who spent 17 years at OSHA developing safety guidance covering benzene, formaldehyde, bloodborne pathogens and lead exposure in construction, and who authored the agency’s cotton dust standard, credited with virtually eliminating byssinosis among textile workers.
The awards continue a pattern of OSHA funding non-profit groups, employer associations, labor unions, tribal organizations and colleges to deliver safety training directly to at-risk workforces rather than through enforcement alone. Recipients were not individually detailed in the initial announcement, and the full list of awarded organizations was not independently verified beyond the agency’s release. More industrial safety developments are tracked in the SectechMedia Technology News archive.