Improving Workers' Access to Resources through Collaborations: Phase II

Background and Objective

NIOSH has developed a strong working relationship with the Mexican government to promote occupational safety and health among immigrant workers in the United States. The next phase of this partnership is to work with the Mexican government to begin to bridge the gap between their network of organizations in the immigrant community and NIOSH’s network of OSH organizations.  The first step in this next phase is to identify potential stakeholder and gather ideas on how to better reach immigrant workers and the institutions that serve them.       

Methods

In an effort to improve NIOSH’s ability to reach immigrant workers, NIOSH will conduct focus groups with leaders from immigrant organizations in Latino communities in different regions of the United States to identify their current activities around OSH, their interest in helping disseminate OSH information or other programming, and barriers they perceive to working on OSH related issues.

Results

The results of these focus groups will not only help NIOSH design better outreach efforts with Latino immigrants but will also help identify the interest level in OSH and key barriers that immigrant organizations face to getting more involved in this issue. Data collection is currently underway and preliminary results will be available for presentation at the conference.

Conclusion

Understanding the perspective and of potential partners is an essential first step in developing possible collaborations with community organizations.