A broken system leaves immigrant workers invisible -- and in danger. High Country News, 8/2009
MMWR August 7, 2009 / 58(RR09);1-11
The Health Care for the Homeless (HCH) Clinicians’ Network and Migrant Clinicians Network (MCN) serve as National Partners to the HRSA Health Disparities Collaboratives. One of the critical roles for both organizations is helping health centers identify their migrant and homeless patients. Both organizations share a commitment to the principal that mobility should not be a barrier for health care access or continuity of care. What follows is a set of succinct and helpful suggestions for how to better identify homeless and migrant patients in your practice.
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- IdentifingMigrantAndHomelessPatients.pdf (30.13 KB)
Welcome to Immu-News, the Immunization Initiatives listserv, a monthly resource for the community of participants in this project. For now, this is post-only listserv (in other words, you will get only one e-mail per month in your mailbox, instead of floods of daily discussions) but we hope to evolve into a more interactive form, something that will truly be of service to you as each of you searches for ways to improve your ability to record and access immunization data, to increase immunizations provided to your clients, and thus to improve the health of your community.
Our topic for this month is introduced by Dr. Jennie McLaurin, MCN’s Migrant Health Specialist and the Project Director for the Immunization Initiative. We include examples and a source for patient-held immunization records, and two articles on the topic. Please feel free to send responses, comments, thoughts, and ideas to the listserv administrator at kath@healthletter.com. If you send comments, we will follow up with your responses and ideas in the next listserv.
Immu-News is also pleased to feature Grounded in Practice, highlights from the real world clinics participating in Immunization Initiatives. We begin with San Benito Health Foundation in Hollister, CA. We invite you to send suggestions, stories, examples of things that have worked to improve immunization practices in your clinic. Send your ideas to kath@healthletter.com
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- immunews_july09.pdf (127.9 KB)
Our June topic is IIS or Immunzaion Registries. Between August and October of 2008, immunization initiative staff at MCN conducted structured interviews with all State Immunization Coordinators or their designated contact persons in an effort to identify state programs that address the immunization needs. In response to the question “does your state have an electronic immunization registry?” we found that 42 states have registries, six states are in the process of implementing them, and two states do not have registries. Out of 42 states with registries, 37 are in both public and private settings and 31 are “birth to death” registries, including both children and adults. To view report, go to: http://www.migrantclinician.org/toolsource/resource/interviews-state-programs-addressing-immunization-needs.html
We offer three articles that discuss the progress of using immunization registries to improve recording and access of immunization data. Click on the links below to access the full articles.
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- immunews_June09.pdf (81.33 KB)
HHS Deputy Secretary Bill Corr today announced the release of $13.4 million for loan repayments to nurses who agree to practice in facilities with critical shortages and for schools of nursing to provide loans to students who will become nurse faculty. The funds were made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), signed Feb. 17, 2009, by President Obama.
“The need for more nurses is great. Over the next decade, nurse retirements and an aging U.S. population, among other factors, will create the need for hundreds of thousands of new nurses,” Deputy Secretary Corr said. “The awards from these two HRSA programs will help us meet projected demand for their services.”
Our May topic is “What Do Migrants from Mexico, Central and South America Think About Immunization?” MCN has conducted several focus groups in recent years on this topic, and we share with you, in two papers, what we learned in these focus groups.
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- immunews_may09.doc (79 KB)
In July of 2005, MCN conducted a focus group with migrant women in a new receiving community on the Eastern Shore of Maryland to help understand their experiences regarding immunization.
The focus group was held at the one of the participant’s home, an established immigrant household. The town house apartment located in a growing immigrant neighborhood offered a comfortable, safe and trusting environment for the group’s participants.
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- EasternShoreImmunization.doc (78.5 KB)
The following report summarizes research conducted by the Migrant Clinicians Network (MCN) in the summer of 2008. The report is an effort to identify state programs that address the immunization needs of adults and migrant and seasonal farmworkers across the country.
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- InterviewsGraphicReportCDC.pdf (144.18 KB)
This site holds many medical Spanish material, including a comprehensive medical Spanish dictionary, complete with audio.
California Department of Public Health offers numerous bilingual educational materials regarding childhood lead poisoning prevention.
The Occupational Lead Poisoning Prevention Program (OLPPP) is a program in the California Department of Public Health that helps employers, workers, and others prevent lead poisoning in workers.
An expert panel review of the scientific literature on lead and health - Environmental Health Perspective, March 2007
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- MedicalManagement_AdultLeadExposure.pdf (519.54 KB)
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development lead information
Lead information from National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
Lead is a toxic metal that was used for many years in products found in and around our homes. Lead also can be emitted into the air from motor vehicles and industrial sources, and lead can enter drinking water from plumbing materials. Lead may cause a range of health effects, from behavioral problems and learning disabilities, to seizures and death. Children six years old and under are most at risk.
A lead fact sheet from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
To access information on a specific state or local area, click on the map or scroll down and pick the state or local name from the list provided.
Approximately 250,000 U.S. children aged 1-5 years have blood lead levels greater than 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, the level at which CDC recommends public health actions be initiated. Lead poisoning can affect nearly every system in the body. Because lead poisoning often occurs with no obvious symptoms, it frequently goes unrecognized. CDC’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program is committed to the Healthy People goal of eliminating elevated blood lead levels in children by 2010.
Variations in BCG vaccination practices impact the interpretation of TB diagnostics, such as the widely used Tuberculin Skin Test (TST). The World Atlas of BCG Policies and Practices will help clinicians in your country and around the world make better diagnostic decisions concerning TB infection.
Migrant Health Promotions (MHP) and MCN have jointly sponsored a series of webcasts on promotora programs in migrant health. This link takes you to a list of these webcasts which are archived and can be viewed at a convenient time for you.
The Nurse Oncology Education Program (NOEP) is a nonprofit project of the Texas Nurses Foundation funded by the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), providing cancer education for nurses in all fields of practice.
In Texas alone, it is estimated that over 97,000 people will be diagnosed yearly with cancer (American Cancer Society, 2008). And we know that racial/ethnic minorities and the financially disadvantaged are diagnosed with cancer later and have a shorter and lower survival rate than non-minorities.
The educated nurse has an opportunity to reduce the impact of cancer throughout the continuum of care by promoting screening, delivering quality care at the bedside, through participation with professional organizations, and as advocates with friends and family members.
Links
The Immunization Initiative at MCN promotes improving childhood, adolescent, and adult immunization coverage levels among migrant and other mobile underserved populations. During the course of the initiative, anecdotal and documented evidence of an increase in the Hispanic indigenous population in United States and outside California surfaced from various sources. A separate initiative emerged, to design and develop a piece of educational material specifically for this population. This article, published in Streamline (March-April, 2009) discusses this initiative.
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- ImmunizationArticle.pdf (110.13 KB)
EPA has revoked regulations that permitted small residues of the pesticide carbofuran in food.
Mexican-made “lead-free” bean pots contain high levels of toxic metal.
A resource from SAGE in English and Spanish. A reminder to cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze to prevent sickness from spreading. Prints legal size.
Sage Words developed a pandemic flu brochure specifically for a small clinic on the Navajo Reservation. Though the illustrations are targeted towards this population, it is available in English and Spanish, and the information is general. It includes preventative measures, and is for low-literacy users. It’s designed to be easily photocopied or printed from computers and is available to anyone who might find it appropriate to use.
This resource helps you address stigmatization by providing best practices for inhibiting and the actions to take when you encounter stigmatization when new infectious diseases and illness emerge.
Early in an outbreak, such as the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, groups of people, places, and animals can be singled out and will be at risk of being stigmatized by association with the threat this virus poses. Groups are stigmatized by an infectious disease when the risk of infection to others is not present or remote but the association of the risk is magnified by others for that population group, or place or animal.
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- CERC Stigmatization fact sheet.doc (89.5 KB)
The Toolkit is a combination of easy-to-use reference guides for health providers and user friendly health education materials on preventing exposures to toxic chemicals and other substances that affect infant and child health.
This website offers some free online lessons which teach basic Spanish concepts. More detailed and advanced lessons can be purchased on CDs from the website.