Migrant Farm Worker Health Education

Overview:
Farm workers come to eastern CT from other countries, mostly Mexico, with a different view of health and medicine.  They often cannot or do not access health care for many reasons. This program provides workers with health education and screenings during their lunch period promoting the concepts of wellness and prevention of disease for themselves and their families, and how to access care in the medical system. At the same time, the program offers health professions students an opportunity to work with the medically underserved and become familiar with health literacy issues and how poverty impacts health.

Program Initiatives:

• Health professions students develop relevant health education topics for presentations during lunchtime at assigned farms, in partnership with one or more Promotores de Salud. Promotores are volunteers who are trained as community health outreach workers. In this case, they are Latino women or men who are natives from Mexico.
• Students prepare materials, handouts, demonstration models, activities, etc. that are language and literacy level appropriate. Promotores must approve and translate the educational materials. Students may request small amounts of money or goods from local stores to support giving clients health products related to the topic (e.g. hygiene products, hats and gloves, socks, laundry detergent, etc).
• Students may recruit and schedule other health professions students to present health topics in collaboration with promotores. The student-promotora teams rotate through different sites of the farm in order to reach as many workers as possible.
• Students also arrange and facilitate health screenings such as blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, HIV, etc. with other students and/or community outreach workers from local agencies. Workers are referred for follow-up care to community health care clinics, hospitals and social services.
• Students create and distribute post-education assessments to gauge the workers’ attitudes and behavior related to presented health topics. The questions are designed to check for retention and behavior change, and to identify future health education and/or screening needs.