Identifying the Occupational Health Needs of Migrant Workers

Abstract

The Community Collaboration for Farmworker Health and Safety is a community-based undertaking comprised of migrant farmworkers, agricultural employers, health professionals, and community stakeholders. The eventual goal of the project is the creation, evaluation, and dissemination of interventions demonstrated to reduce the risk of occupational injury. To do this, the project must build a functional, community work team, and this team must identify the occupational health problem of greatest significance to the community. In this report, the methods of these initial stages of this project are examined by assessing the measurable progress and the observations of project staff and project evaluators. These assessments document both the successful creation of an effective work team and the team's completion of its initial objectives. The assessments also note issues with irregular attendance by some team members, difficulties with some of the essential tasks designated for the team, and imbalance of power among members of the team. Approaches to dealing with similar issues in future projects are suggested.