U.S. Army Medical Materiel Center, Europe, was named a Department of Defense (DoD) Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) Star Site Sept. 24.

The VPP program, developed in 1982 by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and later adopted by the DoD, is a program that promotes effective work-site based safety and health management systems in order to reduce the cost and number of preventable injuries and illnesses. A VPP Star Site is a worksite with injury and illness rates below their industry's average.

Mr. George LeFevre, MEDCOM safety manager, traveled to USAMMCE to present the Star Certificate and flag to the USAMMCE Commander and "Team USAMMCE". Some individuals and groups were also presented awards for their special support to the VPP program.

ERMC Commander Col. John Collins said in his opening remarks, that USAMMCE is one of only seven MEDCOM sites to achieve star status, six of which are in Europe and one is USAMMCE's sister site USAMMC-K and that he is honored to be part of this ceremony.

Colonel Thomas C. Slade, the USAMMCE Commander, thanked his dedicated employees for helping USAMMCE to reach this milestone. He went on to say that everyone should be proud of this accomplishment. What impressed him the most, was that the VPP program, enabled employees at the lowest level to point out issues and present solutions which led to a drop in preventable injuries and illnesses.

In his comments, Wolf Reshef, the USAMMCE safety manager, stated that while there was always a Safety program in place at USAMMCE, implementing VPP led to a 20 percent drop in preventable injuries and illnesses, because the employees became part of the safety management process and were able to detect problems and work on solutions. He further said, "USAMMCE crawled, walked, and finally ran to achieve its goal. Now all we have to do is sustain our level of safety and injury prevention."

USAMMCE kicked off the VPP program in April 2010, with a two day workshop that was facilitated by a DoD Center of Excellence team.