Oral

Immigrant workers constitute a significant proportion of the US workforce. In 2006, 15% of US workers were foreign-born and at least 6.3 million were undocumented. All workers have the same right to a safe and healthy workplace irrespective of their immigration status. 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 workers employed as farm workers, poultry processing, restaurant and domestic workers. Each presenter will provide insights about how notions of social justice are achieved through their work. It is not enough to identify the priorities of the communities with respect to occupational health and safety. It is equally important that actions are implemented with the participation of the communities, and that there is change that the communities can tangibly see. It is also important to identify the formats or avenues through which the communities' voices are being heard. The presenters will provide examples of the challenges they face in addressing social justice concerns and how they attempt to address these issues through community training programs, local leadership development and through advocacy with regulators to create new policies and programs.

Session Objectives: • Identify five major challenges to developing intervention studies targeting immigrant workers. • Discuss methods that can be used to promote improved social justice as part of safety and health intervention programs targeting immigrant workers • Define major strategies and obstacles to implementing successful community based interventions for occupational safety and health

CE Credits: CME, Health Education (CHES), Nursing