: Assessing the Outcomes of an Occupational Health and Safety Training among Spanish-Speaking Immigrant Day Laborers through the Mid-west

Background: Immigrant Latino day laborers working in residential construction are at particularly high risk of fatal and non-fatal traumatic injury and benefit from targeted training.

Aims: To assess the outcomes of health and safety awareness training that was disseminated from the East Coast and customized to the needs of Immigrant day laborers in the Mid-west region. Sample: 134 mostly male Immigrant Latino day laborers recruited through workers' centers in Chicago, Cincinnati, Memphis and Milwaukee who participated in peer-facilitated construction health and safety training courses.

Methods: Participants in health and safety training course, aided through interviewer-read support, completed questionnaires querying knowledge, decision-making, PPE use, and intent to act immediately prior to and directly following the training course. A mixed methods approach was used to assess health and safety awareness.

Results: Majority of the participants was male and born in Mexico, had low English literacy, and worked in the United States for more than 10 years. 10% reported that they had been injured while working in the last 3 months; few had actually missed work due to their injury. A large proportion stated that they had a permanent disability or impairment.

Participants showed gains in ability to select PPE for job tasks, demonstrated an increase in ability to spot errors in safe ladder use, used more specialized health and safety terminology related to the training to describe the errors they noted.

Conclusions: Results suggest gains in content knowledge as well as in ability to critically assess potential safety hazards at a worksite.