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Abstract #157076

Sherry L. Baron, MD MPH, Surveillance Branch, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 4676 Columbia Parkway R-17, Cincinnati, OH 45226, 513 458-7159, sbaron@cdc.gov

Immigrant workers constitute a significant proportion of the US workforce. In 2005, 14% of US workers were foreign-born and approximately 6.3 million foreign-born workers were undocumented. Successful occupational safety and health surveillance, research and intervention programs and policies that target immigrant workers must incorporate methods that address issues of language, literacy, and culture as well as political and economic vulnerabilities. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in collaboration with the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences funded several community-based participatory research projects under the auspices of an Environmental Justice program. This grant program was designed to develop approaches that ensure that the community actively participates with researchers and health care providers in developing responses and setting priorities for intervention strategies. This panel will present the experiences from six of the environmental justice projects targeting immigrant worker communities. Presentations will focus on research methods that have been successfully applied across the research continuum from data collection to implementation of interventions. Issues that will be addressed include: 1) methods for identifying the target population especially when immigrants may try to remain “in the shadows”, 2) the design and administration of culturally and linguistically appropriate survey instruments, 3) utilization of qualitative approaches such as key informant interviews to explore complex barriers to change such as power relations, and 4) approaches for constructing broad community partnerships incorporating a variety of perspectives to promote interventions.

Learning Objectives:

• 1. Identify five major methodological challenges to developing intervention studies targeting immigrant workers.
• 2. Discuss methods that can be used to develop culturally and linguistically appropriate survey instruments targeting immigrant workers
• 3. Define major strategies and obstacles to implementing successful community based interventions for occupational safety and health

Keywords: Immigrants, Occupational Health Programs

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No
Any institutionally-contracted trials related to this submission?

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.