This report captures important happenings in occupational health and safety from August 2013 through July 2014. Authoured by researchers from the George Washington University Milken Institute School Of Public Health, this resource focuses on workplace injury and illness statistics each spring and documents successes, challenges, and areas ripe for improvement in occupational health and safety.  

Part 5 of the 6 webinar series: Essential Clinical Issues in Migration Health

DATE RECORDED: June 5, 2014
PRESENTED BY: Katherine Brieger, RD and Elizabeth Magenheimer

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Participant Evaluation  

Presentation Slides (PDF)

Diabetes continues to be one of the most common and challenging health condition confronting migrants and other underserved populations. It is clear that a healthy lifestyle is critical to mitigating the impact of diabetes on individuals and the population, however effective and appropriate interventions can be difficult to design. Fairhaven Community Health Center in Connecticut and Hudson River Healthcare in New York, are two health centers that have long led the way in creating culturally appropriate lifestyle programs for migrants and other underserved patients. In this session the presenters will discuss lessons learned from the development of a variety of programs for diabetics and other patients including a community garden, nutrition classes, cooking classes, weight management and strategies to encourage exercise. The session will address the clinical core measures related to nutrition and BMI and will also discuss current research test second line drug effectiveness in Type 2 DM. Available in English

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe culturally appropriate diabetes intervention strategies
2. Identify strategies to address clinical core competencies related to nutrition and BMI to improve quality care.
3. Receive “take home” examples of how to incorporate effective nutrition, weight loss, exercise and other health lifestyle strategies.

Part 4 of the 6 webinar series: Essential Clinical Issues in Migration Health

DATE RECORDED: May 14, 2014
PRESENTED BY:  Candace Kugel, FNP, CNM and Megan Danielson, CNM

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 Participant Evaluation  

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Migrant women face significant disparities with an additional layer of complexity and require different intervention strategies. Among them are reproductive health, pregnancy and childbirth, sexual and intimate partner violence, and cancers that disproportionately affect women, including cervical and breast cancer. Women often face environmental and occupational health exposures both in the home and in the workplace that heighten health risks. This session will provide a follow-up to the July 2013 presentation “Women’s Health at the Intersection of Poverty and Migration” that was part of our Clinician Orientation to Migration Health webinar series.  During this presentation Candace Kugel, FNP, CNM, and Meagan Danielson, CNM will discuss quality improvement and health care services for migrant women. The HRSA clinical performance measures related to women’s health will be reviewed as well as resources and best practices for improving the health of migrant women.

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe strategies to address clinical core measures that relate to women’s health .
2. Discuss case studies that assist participants in understanding how creative collaborations and models of care can improve health outcomes for migrant women.
3. Participants will be able to access clinical resources for working with female migrant patients.

These files are part of the Engaging Migrant Men project.

MCN developed 3 vignettes that portray the three messages developed in video and printed form.

Part 1 of the 6 webinar series: Essential Clinical Issues in Migration Health

DATE RECORDED: March 19, 2014
PRESENTED BY:  Deliana Garcia, MA, International Research and Development, Migrant Clinicians Network

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 Participant Evaluation  

 Presentation Slides (PDF)

**Note: Due to technical difficulities the first 7 minutes of the presentation are not recorded. Please refer to the pdf of the slides for the content that was covered in those 7 minutes.

Over the last 30 years, considerable attention has been paid in the clinical setting to cultural competency- the ability to mitigate against the effects of the sociocultural differences between clinicians and patients and to take into account how culture affects the symptoms presented or the patients’ attitude about health care.  More recently, scholars and clinicians have encouraged those in practice or health professions training to focus not only on the behaviors and beliefs of cultural groups but more importantly to consider the structural determinants, prejudices, injustices and blind spots, the “pathologies of social systems” that affect health outcomes and the stigma experienced by patients. The session will introduce participants to the broad framework of structural competency and the five core structural competencies.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify the structures that shape clinical interactions;
2. Discuss the means of developing an extra-clinical language of structure;
3. Rearticulate “cultural” formulations in structural terms;
4. Explain the process of observing and imagining structural interventions; and
5. Describe the concept of structural humility.

Laboratory studies and case reports of accidental exposure to large amounts of chemicals indicate that there are immediate and long‐term negative health consequences of exposure to agricultural chemicals. 

Concern about the adverse public health and environmental effects of pesticide use is persistent. Recognizing the importance of surveillance for acute occupational pesticide-related illness, we report on surveillance for this condition across multiple states. Between 1998 and 1999, a total of 1,009 individuals with acute occupational pesticide-related illness were identified by states participating in the SENSOR-pesticides program. 

The California Pesticide Illness Surveillance Program (PISP) is a major resource for pesticide illness epidemiology. This work attempts to improve characterization of pesticide illness in California, evaluate case ascertainment of the PISP and identify PISP’s limitations and biases for studying the incidence and epidemiology of pesticide-related illness. 

Pesticide Action Network, United Farmworkers of America, and California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation analyzed California government data on agricultural poisonings and enforcement of worker safety standards. Nearly 500 pesticide poisonings were reported for California farmworkers every year. The actual number of pesticide-related illnesses is unknown, since many poisonings go unreported. 

Describes the growth from 1987 through 1996 of the Occupational Pesticide Poisoning Surveillance Program at the Texas Department of Health. The program was initially based on a Sentinel Event Notification System for Occupational Risks (SENSOR) model, using sentinel providers to report cases, supplementing the passive reporting by physicians that was required by law. 

Matthew C. Keifer, MD, MPH; Iris Reyes, MPH; Amy K. Liebman, MA, MPA; Patricia Juarez-Carrillo, PhD, MPH.  Abstract. Audience response systems (ARS) have long been used to improve the interactivity of educational activities. Most studies of ARS have addressed education of literate trainees. How well these devices work with low-literacy subjects is not well studied. Information gathering on the training audience is an important use of ARS and helpful in improving the targeting of training information. However, obtaining demographic information from vulnerable populations with reasons to be concerned about divulging information about themselves has not been tested. In addition, a culturally competent method to effectively collect demographic and evaluation data of this growing population is essential. This project investigated the use of ARS to gather information from Hispanic immigrant workers, many of whom are socially vulnerable and have limited English proficiency (LEP) and low-literacy. Workers attended focus groups and were asked to use ARS devices or clickers to respond to questions. Questions were both catergorical (multiple choice) and open-ended numerical (text entry), and varied from simple queries to more sensitive points regarding immigration. Most workers answered the one-key response categorical questions with little difficulty. In contrast, some participants struggled when responding to numerical questions, especially when the response required pressing multiple clicker keys. An overwhelming majority of participants reported that the clickers were comfortable and easy to use despite the challenges presented by the more complex responses. The error rate increased as question complexity increased and the trend across three ordered categories of response complexity reached statistical significance. Results suggest that ARS is a viable method for gathering dichotomous or higher-order categorical information from LEP and low-literacy populations in a group setting while assuring anonymity. However, it is recommended that clickers be developed and tested with fewer, bigger, and more widely separated buttons, and less printing on the buttons for these populations. Further research is needed to determine the effectiveness of using clickers with simplified configurations in the workplace as a tool to collect data for surveys and assessments and to better engage LEP and low-literacy workers in training sessions. 

Summary of Results from the California Pesticide Illness Surveillance Program - 2010.  

 The Department of Pesticide Regulation administers the California pesticide safety program, widely regarded as the most stringent in the nation.  Mandatory reporting of pesticide illnesses has been part of this comprehensive program since 1971.  Illness reports are collected, evaluated and analyzed by program staff.  PISP is the oldest and largest program of its kind in the nation; its scientists provide data to regulators, advocates, industry, and indivudal citizens.

Despite ongoing concern about pesticide exposure of farmworkers and their families, relatively few studies have tried to directly test the association of behavioral and environmental factors with pesticide exposure in this population.  This study seeks to identify factors potentially associated with pesticide exposure among farmworkers; grade the evidence in the peer-reviewed literature for such associations; and propose a minimum set of measures necessary to understand farmworker risk for pesticide exposure.   From: Environmental Health Perspectives