Beyond worker training – the role of the community health workers in sustaining safe practices in an occupational setting

Large animal agriculture is among the most hazardous agricultural activities and workers in dairy face significant health and safety risks.  The industrialization of diary has coincided with a growing immigrant workforce; immigrants now make up about half the hired workforce in dairy. Increasing immigrant workers with unaddressed language barriers and training needs add to the challenges of improving safety in dairy. Few resources address the health and safety needs of this changing workforce.

The Seguridad en las Lecherias (Safety in Dairies) project bridges this gap by providing a workplace-based, bilingual safety intervention for immigrant dairy workers in Wisconsin. This program includes a training curriculum designed and tested to educate workers in reducing worksite hazards and improving health and safety knowledge and practices. It is delivered on the farm and engages workers using culturally appropriate education techniques to ensure understanding by workers with low literacy levels and limited formal education. Through a ‘train-the-trainer’ approach selected immigrant dairy workers are employed on farms where they work to serve as community health workers (promotores de salud) to help deliver training to coworkers, reinforce health and safety messages on an ongoing basis and serve as a liaison between the workers and the employer. The community health workers are compensated for their time and effort addressing safety. The employers also implement hazard abatement strategies. This session presents findings regarding the impact of this model in an industrial farm environment and the acceptability of this model from the perspective of both the employer and the employee.