Building sustainable partnerships with migrant farmworkers in rural Washington State

Proyecto Bienestar, a community-academic partnership aimed at addressing environmental and occupational health issues among Hispanic farmworkers in Washington's Yakima valley has existed for 7 years. The partnership involves the Northwest Community Education Center, the Yakima Valley Farmworkers Clinic and Heritage University in the Yakima valley and the University of Washington. First funded by an NIEHS grant, which supported data gathering and prioritization of community environmental and occupational health issues, it has since been successful in obtaining funding from other sources to address several important issues in the valley. However, the partnership has undergone significant changes in personnel since its incipience and institutional memory resides in the minds of only two of its original founding partners. Issues first prioritized by the community remain important but the availability of funds has had some influence on which prioritized issues and be addressed first. Institutional priorities; academic, clinical and those of the community organization, influence the partnership's agenda and its ability to respond to perceived or expressed community need. In a population which is financially marginal, continuing to listen to the voice of the community remains a temporal and financial challenge. This presentation will describe some of the successes but also explore in detail some of the challenges maintaining and advancing this partnership.