Community Collaboration for Farmworker Health and Safety

Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital, Cooperstown NY

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant) The Community Collaboration for Farmworker Health and Safety project will utilize the PRECEDE-PROCEED model of health education/intervention to create locally-designed occupational interventions at each of two independent migrant farm worker community sites. The aim is a directly measurable decline in previously quantitated rates of occupational injury and illness in migrant communities in eastern New York and Maine. The fundamental goals are: 1) to build an effective coalition of community migrant health programs - Maine Migrant Health Program (MMHP) and Hudson Valley Migrant Health Program (HVMHP); primary care practitioners (PCPs) at each site; and a research team - the Northeast Center for Agricultural Health (NEC). 2) to develop and test a process for effective occupational interventions through coalitions. This process would be of great utility to the NEC in stimulating similar interventions at a number of other collaborating sites throughout the Northeast. Central to this project are the efforts of a NEC-based Project Coordinator and of Site Coordinators at each of the community sites. Through this work the project would include: 1) dialogue with the migrant community, soliciting community input and identifying leaders to join a project team of workers, employers, PCPs and other stakeholders at each site. 2) Following the PRECEDE-PROCEED model, in assisting these teams in selecting the most significant occupational health problems challenging the community and devising appropriate interventions for these problems. The teams would draw upon existing local injury data from ongoing NEC epidemiologic studies, upon the injury prevention expertise of the PCP committee members and upon community input to make these determinations. 3) Solicit project team and community review and assessment of the process and intervention outcome evaluation data collected by NEC researchers to determine those interventions that proved to be effective. 4) Utilize community and coalition resources to both disseminate effective interventions to the migrant and farm community, as well as the occupational health community and to permanently embed all or portions of the interventions in local organizations. The proposed project addresses a number of NIOSH's NORA priorities and would lead to ongoing coalition-based intervention efforts with the other ten migrant health programs who are currently collaborating with ongoing NEC migrant farmworker injury epidemiology research.