230909 Cultivating illness, seeding change: Injustices threatening farm workers' health and possibilities for transformation

Tuesday, November 9, 2010 : 10:35 AM - 10:50 AM

Don Villarejo, PhD , California Institute for Rural Studies, Davis, CA
     
This presentation will highlight injustices faced by farm workers describing the ripple effects of these injustices on our health system. Many farm workers (and others who work to produce, process, distribute and sell our food) earn so little that affording food – especially healthy food – is a struggle. Farm workers are disproportionately low-income and minority, and many are immigrants including undocumented immigrants. Farm workers are among the highest risk groups for work-related injuries and illnesses and suffer high rates of chronic disease, yet many are not covered by workers' compensation and few have health insurance coverage. While the injustices are many, this presentation will highlight movements for change and opportunities for public health action.

Learning Areas:
Environmental health sciences
Epidemiology
Occupational health and safety

Learning Objectives:
Describe the current injustices facing farm workers. Discuss the challenges facing farm workers. Identify two movements for change. Discuss opportunities for public health action.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have served on several expert panels appointed to advise Federal agencies on the health and safety of U.S. hired farm workers, including the 12-member committee appointed by the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council to review all of the relevant research programs of the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (2007-08), and the 7-member expert panel to review the programs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the areas of sustainable agriculture, farm management and worker safety (2009). I have authored and co-authored more than 15 peer-reviewed scientific papers, including six since 2003 on the topic of hired farm worker health; most recently, as first author of an invited contribution to the special issue on Migration and Health of The American Journal of Industrial Medicine (2010). I am also first author of the sole article on farm labor health in the recently published 15th Edition of "Maxcy-Rosenau-Last" Public Health and Preventive Medicine (McGraw-Hill, 2007). Since 1980, I have presented more than 100 invited lectures on farm labor and related topics, including formal symposia at academic institutions, such Cornell University Latino Studies (2007) and King Hall Law School, University of California, Davis (2003). Finally, in the course of three decades, he has served as a consultant to more than a dozen Federal and State agencies on farm labor, as well as serving as an Expert Witness in farm labor civil litigation and as an Expert Witness for the Agricultural Labor Relations Board of California.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

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.

Back to: 4080.0: Social Justice, It’s What’s Not for Dinner: Understanding and Overcoming Food System Disparities to Promote Health (A collaboration by the Food & Environment Working Group, ENV, OHS, IH, CBPHC, PHEHP, EPI, and SW)