Farmworker Community Research Articles

Music Therapy with Mexican Migrant Farmworkers: A Pilot Study

In the mountains of Western North Carolina, Christmas tree farms are one of the main sources of income for local farmers and landowners. In order for this business to be profitable to these individuals, many of them hire migrant farmworkers from Mexico and other Latin American countries. These workers, who may be either documented or undocumented, come into the region to assist with the care, maintenance, and harvesting of the trees. The farmworkers' journeys are often long and difficult and separate them from their families and social support systems for long periods of time. They often arrive to live in conditions that are less than ideal, and they must work long hours to make the most pay. Many of them will live with men they have never met before, and it will be the first time that they are not living with their families (Legal Aid, 2007). In these close quarters, if one worker has serious mental health issues, it can affect the entire house. Needless to say, many of these farmworkers experience high levels of depression and anxiety, which often present as somatic symptoms such as a high heart rate or shortness of breath. When a farm worker experiences these symptoms, his work may be affected, which may lead him to seek medical treatment if available (Kim-Goodwin & Bechtel, 2004).Since many of these farmworkers do not have access to medical treatment, psychosocial counseling or education, it is necessary to find alternatives that help them reach their fullest potential and maintain their health. As they have come to the United States to earn money for their families at home, maintaining health is critical to their success. How can their needs be met with culturally appropriate interventions?Latino and Mexican CultureMany Caucasians misinterpret the way the Latino population interact with them, as Latinos may be courteous, reserved, or polite. Knowledge of cultural differences is essential for therapists providing services to Mexicans living in the U.S. (De Leon Siantz, 1994).Two main components of the Latino and Mexican cultures include familism and machismo (De Leon Siantz, 1994). De Leon Siantz outlined three important aspects of MexicanAmerican family: familism, male dominance, and subordination of the young. Through familism, interdependence is emphasized over independence. While individual dignity is important, its importance is embedded in the context of the family and the individual's role within the family. While this system could imply distance, De Leon Siantz noted that personal interactions are highly important to this cultural group.Another component of the Mexican culture that is often misinterpreted or misunderstood by Caucasians is machismo, the idea that the man makes all of the decisions for the family and is responsible for providing his family with economic support (Andres-Hyman, 2006). While this often agrees with the predominant culture in North America, this cultural trait can cause great stress on Mexican men. Many Mexican men view this responsibility with great obligation (Clare, Jimenez, & McClendon, 2005).Music has long played a central role in Mexican culture. From traditional Spanish music, such as seguidillas, coplas, and fandangos, new genres were developed like the son and jarabe. As these new forms of music became popular, they began to be identified with Mexican national identity, even though they were regionally based (Sheehy, 1998). However, women's roles in the Mexican music culture have been somewhat limited. Many of the places where musicians, such as the mariachi played and socialized were cantinas (Perez, 2002). A girl was not supposed to play with the mariachi for fear that she would become a callejera, a woman who walks the streets.Migrant Farmworkers and Mental HealthWithin the greater Mexican-American community, there is the migrant farm worker community, which includes individual men and families. It is estimated that there are 1 . …

“Stains” on their self‐discipline: Public health, hygiene, and the disciplining of undocumented immigrant parents in the nation's internal borderlands

Histories of the role of public health in nation building have revealed the centrality of hygiene to eugenic mechanisms of racial exclusion in the turn-of-the-20th-century United States, yet little scholarship has examined its role in the present day. Through ethnography in a Mexican migrant farmworking community in California's Central Valley, we explore the role of oral-hygiene campaigns in racializing Mexican immigrant parents and shaping the substance of their citizenship. Public health officials perceive migrant farmworkers' children's oral disease as a "stain of backwardness," amplifying Mexican immigrants' status as "aliens." We suggest, however, that the recent concern with Mexican immigrant children's oral health blends classic eugenic concerns in public health with neoliberal concerns regarding different immigrant groups' capacity for self-governance.

Prenatal Care Disparities and the Migrant Farm Worker Community

The pregnant migrant farm worker faces many barriers to accessing healthcare in the United States due to poverty, language/literacy issues, transportation difficulties, and geographic isolation. The advanced practice nurse has the opportunity to contribute solutions to the problems of lack of adequate prenatal care among the migrant farm worker community, if he/she is aware of the need and can institute novel models of care. This article describes the problem of migrant farm worker health and suggests ways that advanced practice nurses can provide cost effective, competent professional care to reduce or eliminate the obstacles to care for this population.

Familias con Voz: Community Survey Results from an Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Prevention Project with Migrant Workers

The Migrant Clinicians Network’s Familias con Voz (Families with a Voice) project aims to train migrant men and women to become intimate partner violence (IPV) peer educators in their communities. In preparation for implementing educational activities, a community survey was conducted with 298 participants in three Texas border counties. Verbal abuse, such as name calling, was the most frequent type of violence reported. Men perceived anger as a cause of partner violence significantly more than women. Only 22% of respondents reported knowing of a shelter they could turn to for help. Surprisingly, a majority of participants cited “seeking help from the police” when asked about ways to decrease partner violence. Survey results offer insight into developing effective intervention programs by capturing the intended audiences’ beliefs and attitudes. Additionally, survey results reveal possible strategies for how to tackle IPV in U.S.-Mexico border migrant farmworker communities.

Learning from the Dead: Wounds, Women, and Activism in Cherríe Moraga’s <i>Heroes and Saints</i>

Cherrie Moraga's play Heroes and Saints (1992) depicts a Mexican American farming whose children are dying. (1) Like the fruits and vegetables that grow in the surrounding fields, these deaths are produced by the agriculture industry's reliance on pesticides. While the adults also experience pesticide poisoning, the play turns its attention to the diseased and dead children as the most visible and poignant sign of the community's loss. Indeed, the central character, Cerezita Valle, is represented as one of the earliest cases of pesticide poisoning: she was born with a head but no body after her pregnant mother worked in the contaminated fields. Now approaching adulthood, Cerezita is a consummate reader and commentator on the diseased and dying that she watches from her window and experiences in her home. Moraga takes as her starting point the very real circumstances of the McFarland of Mexican American farm workers in California's San Joaquin Valley. In McFarland and the surrounding communities, pesticide poisoning took a strong toll; the birth defects and cancers developing among its children inspired the United Farm Workers Movement to release The Wrath of Grapes, a short documentary detailing the problems at hand. Moraga cites this documentary's depiction of a child born with no limbs as one of the key images motivating her play. (2) In addition, Moraga's casting preferences emphasize the importance of integrating theater with community: she notes that those playing El Pueblo (the town) ideally ... should be made up of an ensemble of people from the local Latino community (90). This desire to unite people from the outside of the theater with the pueblo onstage reveals an aesthetic intimate with social activism. In Heroes and Saints, the dead bodies of children are crucified in silent protest of cancerous pesticidal conditions in Mexican American farmworking communities. As limp bodies hanging from a cross, these dead children command attention in ways that their privately buried bodies would not. However, how the Chicano/a on stage and the watching (or reading) audience understand these crucified children depends on their interpretative practices--it depends on genre. The play dramatizes two possible gothic readings of these bodies: one views the dead and injured bodies that traverse the play as an irrational threat manifested by the Mexican American farm workers; in the second reading of these bodies, ritual Christian performance recuperates the gothic as a mode that can mobilize injury into social change. Through the intersection of drama and the gothic, the injured become a locus for protest and transnational coalition. By centralizing death, the play reclaims the dead in ways that counter state interpretations of those bodies--as unintelligible, as public commodity, and as invisible. In the following pages I examine death and injury as potentially productive of social protest. In so doing, I hope to engage various ways of understanding death in the public sphere and the potential of pain asa basis from which to organize a multivalent Chicano/a and transnational Latino/a community. In the play, the crucified dead interrupt the everyday workings of the social structure and the placidity of those living within it; Cerezita's mother, Dolores, performs a wounded motherhood that denaturalizes female nurturing by conceiving family relationships through bodily dissolution, and Cerezita's transformation of bodily lack into revolutionary ritual centralizes the transformative potential of performance. In staging herself as la Virgen de Guadalupe, Cerezita transposes her mother's worn body and the body of the Holy Mother, pointing toward environmentally racist and patriarchal Chicano formations of injured women and rearticulating those injuries into communal connection. Cerezita's performance enables politicized connection through communal histories of pain that transcend this particular Chicano/a and extend across borders throughout Latin America. …

DDT Exposure, Work in Agriculture, and Time to Pregnancy Among Farmworkers in California

This study examined whether exposure to pesticides, including dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), was associated with longer time to pregnancy (TTP). Pregnant women (N = 402) living in a migrant farmworker community were asked how many months they took to conceive. Women reported their and their partners' occupational and home pesticide exposure preceding conception. In a subset (N = 289), levels of DDT and dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE), were measured in maternal serum. No associations were seen with p, p'-DDT, o, p'-DDT, or p, p'-DDE. Maternal occupational pesticide exposure (fecundability odds ratios [fOR] = 0.8, 95% CI: 0.6 to 1.0), home pesticide use (fOR = 0.6, 95% CI: 0.4 to 0.9), and residence within 200 ft of an agricultural field (fOR = 0.7, 95% CI: 0.5 to 1.0) were associated with reduced fecundability (ie, longer TTP). Longer TTP was seen among women, but not men, reporting exposure to agricultural and home pesticides.

A Community Environmental Health Assessment in a Latino Farm Worker Community

A Community Environmental Health Assessment in a Latino Farm Worker Community

The Human Face of Economic Globalization: Mexican Migrants and their Support for Free Trade

Economic globalization is loosely defined as lowering international barriers to the movement of economic goods and services (including capital and labor). The standard argument since political economist David Ricardo is that lowering such barriers improves everyone's circumstances due to the ability to capitalize on each nation's comparative advantages (e.g. Ricardo 1895). He demonstrated that, even if one nation is more efficient at producing everything than some other nation, even then it is still Pareto superior to exchange on comparative advantage. It is this basic notion that leads to the implication that increased flows of goods and services, of capital and labor alike, lead to Pareto improvements: that is, these increased flows make at least some (and in principle all) better off, and no one worse off. However, labor flows, and especially the lowering of barriers to entry of labor, remain highly contentious.While lowering barriers to trades and goods yields widely dispersed benefits (such as lower costs for consumers), the costs can be highly concentrated (e.g. the demise of the U.S. textile industry). A key strategy advanced industrialized nations can use to adapt to these costs is to open borders: that is, to lower barriers to flows of labor, permitting cheaper labor to migrate. the U.S., the relative permeability of borders has led millions of Latinos to migrate to the U.S. to take jobs that both pay better and are more plentiful here than in their home countries (Massey and Espinoza 1997). The human face of this policy has created a pool of between three and five million agricultural migrant workers in the U.S., 80% of whom are foreign immigrants (and 90% of these foreign workers are Mexican, Magana and Hovey 2003).Mexican farm workers who immigrate to the U.S. provide an interesting setting for thinking about these issues. They move here for economic reasons. Typically, they come here to earn higher wages than they could receive at home, with the intention of sending any excess above living costs back to their families. While this is a palpable benefit to these workers, some in the U.S. are concerned that the workers seem to be exploited when one compares their fortunes to those of typical Americans. Indeed, the farm workers themselves are very clear that their standard of living, especially in the migrant farm worker communities, is low in absolute terms.Given that many immigrants are undocumented, the more unscrupulous among their employers are able to exploit the workers' situation by not providing decent housing or safe working conditions. They know that it is unlikely that the farm workers themselves will be in a situation to complain. They are not in that position because there are barriers to entry (that is, they need governmental approval and documentation to legally enter the U.S. and its work force), and if they avoid such barriers by undocumented entry, they are vulnerable to this exploitation. the usual economic sense, the entire set of partners to this set of exchanges are made better off nonetheless; and so, this is a strictly Pareto superior outcome, even if many might conclude that there is clearly a system of exploitation here as well. As Amartya Sen once pointed out (1970, p.22), In short, a society or an economy can be Pareto-optimal and still be perfectly disgusting.In this context, it seems particularly important to understand the attitudes and choices made by those at the front lines of the issues, as it were. And thus, we return to the question of how Latino migrant workers react to economic globalization - do they tend to support it or oppose it, and why? One could simply measure their support for globalization. However, an even more useful way to evaluate this question is to study how these workers react to the globalization debate itself: the pro- and con- messages which constitute that debate. Gauging how they react to these messages will first reveal if their support for free trade increases or decreases depending on the type of message, but it will also reveal the magnitude of the changes, demonstrating how susceptible the workers' free trade attitudes are to persuasion. …

Quantified activity pattern data from 6 to 27-month-old farmworker children for use in exposure assessment

This study was conducted to describe exposure prone behaviors of infants and toddlers in the farmworker community. Analysis of hand and mouth contact frequencies and durations aids understanding of how children interact with their environment and are exposed via contact with surfaces. All 23 participating children (8 female infants, 5 male infants, 5 female toddlers and 5 male toddlers) lived with at least one farmworker. Children were videotaped at home for 2–6 h. Video footage was translated into micro-level activity time series (MLATS) for both hands and the mouth. MLATS were processed to calculate hourly duration in microenvironments, contact frequency, hourly contact duration and median contact duration. The median hourly duration spent indoors was 53 min/h. The median hand-to-mouth frequency was 15.2 events/h and the median object-to-mouth frequency was 27.2 events/h. The hourly mouthing duration was 1.2 and 2.2 min/h with the hands and objects, respectively. The median mouthing duration with hands and objects was 2 s. The median contact frequency for both hands combined was 689.4 events/h with an hourly contact duration of 100.5 min/h and a median contact duration of 3 s. Infants had higher mouthing frequencies with non-dietary objects while toddlers had higher mouthing frequencies with objects associated with pica (i.e., paper). Boys had higher contact frequencies while girls had longer contact durations. These sub-group differences indicate factors such as age and gender should be accounted for when conducting exposure assessments. Contact frequencies in this study are higher than current US EPA recommendations, questioning their protective value for infants and toddlers.

Elucidating empowerment in El Proyecto Bienestar (the Well‐Being Project)

This paper describes differences in how socioculturally diverse participants in one community-based participatory research project negotiated 'empowerment', and the implications of those differences for nurses involved in farmworker health and safety efforts. Internationally, empowerment and community participation are increasingly being used as strategies to reduce health disparities. Theories of empowerment vary in the academic literature and their connotations vary across cultures. Study participants were part of El Proyecto Bienestar, a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project whose aim was to identify and respond to occupational and environmental health threats in one Mexican-American farmworker community in the United States of America. Participant observation was used to audiorecord 18 participants in the third year (2006) of this 4-year project discussing future project activities. Discourse analysis was used to analyse the transcripts. While participants agreed that 'empowerment' was central to the project, they had different perspectives on what the term meant and the role that the project should play in empowering the farmworker community. Empowerment discourses positioned the project in three ways: (1) as an instrument used to strengthen farmworkers' collective political voice, (2) as an instrument used to represent multiple community interests and (3) as an instrument used to advocate on behalf of farmworkers. Individuals used multiple discourses signifying the complexity in participants' roles and obligations. Balancing power and developing knowledge collaboratively requires understanding multiple approaches to empowerment. Community empowerment as an outcome should not come at the expense of individual empowerment as part of the CBPR process.

Food-Coping Strategy Index Applied to a Community of Farm-Worker Households in South Africa

In South Africa, households living in informal urban settlements, in rural areas, and on commercial farms experience various levels of dietary variety, food intake, and household hunger. Low incomes, poor food production and availability, and low spending power characterize these households. Households employ various food-coping strategies to alleviate food stress or poor food availability. To apply an existing food-coping strategy (FCS) index to assess household hunger and its usefulness in identifying the level of food stress and the patterns of food coping in farm-worker households. A cross-sectional survey was conducted. Data were gathered from women (18 to 57 years of age) responsible for food provision in a small farm-worker community in Fouriesburg, South Africa. A structured food-coping questionnaire and a standardized FCS index were used to gather data. The two most common FCS used were relying on cheaper food (chicken feet, diluted soya-mince soup) or less preferred food (meat bones) and employing food-seeking strategies (gathering wild foods), followed by consumption of seed stock (maize) and reduced portion sizes (protein foods and side dishes), resulting in starch-based diets of poor variety. Seasonal strategies varied according to the level of food stress experienced. Patterns of food coping were identified. Negative FCS (limiting food choices, only consuming starchy staples) may cause poor health status. The FCS index was effectively used to assess farm-worker household food-coping behavior (early, clear signals of the level of food distress). These results could be used to allocate appropriate food aid (type of food) and to design nutrition education programs focused on positive FCS (food gathering or bartering) in a particular community to prevent suboptimal nutritional status.

Striving to Provide Opportunities for Farm Worker Community Participation in Research

Hispanic farm workers and their families in the U.S. face a number of environmental and occupational health risks, yet they are rarely given the opportunity to choose the focus of the research and interventions that take place in their communities. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) can be one effective approach to changing this situation. CBPR is an approach to research that makes community members partners in research rather than subjects of research. This article describes the experience of El Proyecto Bienestar (The Well-Being Project), a CBPR project in the Yakima Valley, Washington, with the aim of facilitating the Hispanic community's involvement in the identification and prioritization of occupational and environmental health issues among farm workers. The project utilized three forms of data collection (key informant interviews, community surveys, and a town hall meeting) to create a list of environmental and occupational health issues of concern. Investigators strove to provide opportunities for community participation in the various stages of research: study concept and design, data collection, data analysis and interpretation, conclusions, and dissemination of results. This article describes the involvement that community members had at each stage of the three forms of data collection and outlines the basic findings that led the Community Advisory Board to prioritize four areas for future work. In addition, it describes the challenges the project faced from the researcher perspective. Using examples from this experience, we conclude that this model may be an effective way for farm workers and their families to have a voice in prioritizing health and safety issues for research and action in their communities.

A Pilot Program Using Promotoras de Salud to Educate Farmworker Families About the Risks from Pesticide Exposure

This paper reviews a successful community-based education effort to minimize pesticide exposure to migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their families through innovative training curricula, informal participatory educational techniques and culturally sensitive outreach methods. In 2004, Migrant Clinicians Network, Inc., trained lay health educators, or promotoras de salud, from local agencies in southern New Mexico in pesticide safety and in ways to successfully promote safety information in the farmworker community. Through home visits and small group workshops, the promotoras trained 273 farmworkers and farmworker family members on ways to reduce exposures to pesticides in their homes and at work, with an emphasis on protecting children. The families received a Spanish language comic book that reinforced the pesticide safety information, emphasizing the health effects of acute and chronic pesticide exposure and steps to protect farmworker children from pesticide exposure. The project resulted in a significant increase in knowledge regarding the routes of exposure, the vulnerability of children, the signs and symptoms of pesticide poisonings and the ways to minimize pesticide exposures. Additionally, the project showed improved behaviors aimed at minimizing pesticide exposure through accidental poisonings in the home. This pilot project proved the efficacy of an in-home, one-on-one approach with a culturally appropriate educational comic book as an instrument to help transfer education to the community. Moreover, the educational method involving promotoras offers a training-of-trainer approach that is easy to implement and potentially replicate.

Religion and Social Capital Among Mexican Immigrants in Southwest Florida

The essay investigates the diverse ways in which religious and civic institutions operate in a multiethnic migrant farmworker community. Our research found that while religious organizations are an important source of social capital, they may be ill-equipped to deal with the heterogeneity and mobility of migrant populations. In Immokalee, churches provide access to new social networks that can facilitate the accumulation of social capital, but these networks tend to favor more established immigrants over migrant farmworkers and sometimes reinforce the segregation of groups along ethnic and regional lines. In other words, churches facilitate “bonding” social capital but often neglect “bridging” social capital. In contrast, a secular organization, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, is more effective in bridging ethnic and regional differences among immigrants and in generating “political capital” that seeks to affect political and social change.

The Impact of Promotoras on Social Support and Glycemic Control Among Members of a Farmworker Community on the US-Mexico Border

The purpose of this study is to describe the effect of a promotora-driven intervention to build social support as a means to affect self-management behaviors and clinical outcomes in a farmworker community on the US-Mexico border. Promotoras implemented a community-based intervention that included support groups, home/hospital visits, telephone support, and advocacy to people with diabetes. A 12-month pre/post study design was used to investigate the relationship between promotora contact, perceived support, and clinical outcomes. Clinical data were gathered from 70 participants during routine physician visits. A pre/post questionnaire was used to measure perceived support and self-management practices. Glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels decreased 1% among high-risk participants. Improved HbA1c level was associated with promotora advocacy and participation in promotora-led support groups. Participants reported increased support from family and friends and more comfort speaking about diabetes (la enfermedad) with family and friends. These findings document improvement in both clinical and social health indicators for Mexican Americans in a farmworker community when a promotora model is used to provide and facilitate culturally relevant support for diabetes self-management practices.

Housing Characteristics of Farmworker Families in North Carolina

Adequate housing is a basic human right and an important determinant of environmental health. Little research has documented the housing quality of immigrant Latino farmworker families. This analysis uses data from four surveys of North Carolina farmworker communities conducted in 2001 and 2003 to document aspects of housing quality that could affect farmworker family health. Three housing domains are considered: dwelling characteristics, household characteristics, and household behaviors. Most farmworker families live in mobile homes, and few own their dwellings. Many are located near agricultural fields. Most houses are small, but household size is large, containing adults, in addition to the nuclear family. Crowding is common among farmworker families. Many farmworker households lack basic facilities, such as washing machines. Farmworkers attempt to reduce exposure by frequently cleaning their dwellings. These findings suggest that the health of farmworker families is at risk due to inadequate housing. Further research on housing-related health effects among farmworker families is needed.

The effect of personal and socio- conomic variables on the knowledge, attitude and belief of farm workers about HIV/AIDS, two case studies – a lesson for extension

The seriousness of HIV/AIDS and the effect of the epidemic on the Agricultural sector cannot be ignored anymore. Farm worker communities have been identified as one of the most vulnerable groups in South Africa. The Primary Agriculture and Training Authority (PAETA) invited the organisation People Management to develop and present a HIV/AIDS Intervention Program with the slogan, “If I know my status I can manage it” to two farming communities. Respondents knowledge, attitude and belief before and after the intervention program were determined and according to the results the farm workers knowledge increased from 42%before to 76% after the Intervention Program. Their attitude changed positively from 72% to 85% and their belief about HIV/AIDS changed positively from 48% to 76%. The influence of the socio-economic variables before the Intervention Program indicated that females had a better knowledge and a more positive attitude towards HIV/AIDS than the male respondents. Married respondents also indicated a more realistic belief about HIV/AIDS than the unmarried respondents. After the Intervention Program the most important difference that occurred was between married and unmarried respondents and in favour of the married respondents. Most important however is the fact that every member of the two communities came forward and were tested for HIV/AIDS. Now they know their status and can manage it. For extension services and therefore for Extensionists several lessons have been learned. The program focused on the adoption behaviour of the farm workers. The vision was clear: Participation by all community members and stakeholders ensured; and community members were trained as peer educators. The Intervention Program was intensive and well designed and presented program. A networking system and linkages was in place to support the workers. South African Journal of Agricultural Extension Vol. 35 (1) 2006: pp. 71-92

Occupational Health Survey of Farm Workers by Camp Health Aides

Little is known about the magnitude of occupational health problems among migrant farm workers. A community-based cross-sectional survey was conducted in two migrant farm worker communities: Homestead, Florida, and Kankakee, Illinois. Camp Health Aides (CHAs) interviewed 425 workers about job tasks, personal protective equipment (PPE), field sanitation, work exposures, and selected health conditions. Limited provision of personal protective equipment was reported among those reporting early re-entry tasks: 35% in Kankakee and 42% in Homestead were provided gloves, and 22% in Homestead and 0% in Kankakee were provided protective clothing. About two-thirds were provided toilet facilities and water for hand-washing. Workers reported high prevalences of health conditions consistent with exposure to ergonomic hazards and pesticides. The prevalence of back pain in the past 12 months was 39% in Homestead and 24% in Kankakee. Among Homestead participants, 35% experienced eye symptoms, while 31% reported skin symptoms. These symptoms were less prevalent among Kankakee participants (16% for both eye and skin symptoms). Specific areas of concern included back pain associated with heavy lifting and ladder work; eye and skin irritation associated with fertilizer application tasks and with working in fields during or after spraying of chemicals, especially early re-entry of sprayed fields; and skin irritation associated with a lack of access to hand-washing facilities. In both Kankakee and Homestead, better adherence to safety standards is needed, as well as greater efforts to implement solutions that are available to help prevent work-related musculoskeletal problems.

Acculturation and Mammography Screening among Hispanic Women Living in Farmworker Communities

The relationship between acculturation and mammography screening practices among Hispanic women is unclear due to inconsistent study findings. The purpose of this research was to further investigate the effect of acculturation on mammography screening practices among Hispanic women and to explore the effect of biculturalism on mammography screening. Hispanic female farmworkers (N = 716) who were 50 years of age and older living in communities in Texas, New Mexico, and California were interviewed at their homes. Data collection was conducted from November 2001 to February 2002. Logistic regression models showed no significant effect for acculturation for the entire sample. Post hoc stratified analysis found that bicultural study participants in California were 3 times more likely to be adherent to screening compared to those with low acculturation. Study findings suggest that distinct differences might exist for Hispanic women living in farmworker communities in California, and perhaps other communities not on the United States-Mexico border. Women in such communities with low levels of acculturation can be targeted for interventions to increase mammography adherence.

Correlates of Mammography Screening Among Hispanic Women Living in Lower Rio Grande Valley Farmworker Communities

Factors contributing to the underuse of mammography screening by female Hispanic farmworkers aged 50 years and older in the Lower Rio Grande Valley were determined through home-based, Spanish-language personal interviews (N = 200). Questions covered adherence to screening mammography guidelines (mammogram within 2 years), healthcare access, sociodemographic characteristics, and theoretical constructs related to breast cancer screening in the literature. Multivariate findings indicated that adherent women were 3.6 times more likely to have health insurance. Self-efficacy for obtaining a mammogram and decisional balance were also significantly related to adherence; age, income, and education variables were not associated, perhaps because of restricted variation. Results indicate continuing efforts are needed to ensure that medically underserved migrant farmworker women have access to health care services. In addition, efforts to increase their self-efficacy in obtaining a mammogram and to counter negative attitudes and opinions by stressing the positive prognosis associated with early detection are warranted.