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A culturally appropriate health and safety training curriculum for Hispanic immigrant workers in dairy

Iris Anne Reyes, Yurany Sanchez, Patricia Juarez-Carillo, Amy Liebman, and Matthew Keifer

Summary

Hispanic immigrants face numerous challenges in the US. In occupational settings, workers struggle between keeping their job, staying safe, and navigating the worker protection and health systems. As stated by David Michaels, OSHA Assistant Secretary, “Latino workers face the most dangerous working conditions and the fewest protections.” This is particularly challenging in high risk industries such as agriculture. Our comprehensive intervention is based on multiple approaches to reduce work-related injuries and diseases in dairy. We designed a culturally appropriate curriculum for Hispanic immigrant workers to increase workers’ knowledge and promote behavioral changes. Training topics include hazard communication, animal handling, machinery and equipment, workers rights and responsibilities, chemicals and horizontal silos. We also implemented principles of the Community Health Worker (CHW) model by creating a network of promotores de salud (PdS) to sustain the effects of the intervention, reinforce knowledge and practices and serve as liaison between farmers and workers.

Details

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