A Pilot Program Using Promotoras de Salud to Educate Farmworker Families About the Risks from Pesticide Exposure

Abstract

This paper reviews a successful community-based education effort to minimize pesticide exposure to migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their families through innovative training curricula, informal participatory educational techniques and culturally sensitive outreach methods. In 2004, Migrant Clinicians Network, Inc., trained lay health educators, or promotoras de salud, from local agencies in southern New Mexico in pesticide safety and in ways to successfully promote safety information in the farmworker community. Through home visits and small group workshops, the promotoras trained 273 farmworkers and farmworker family members on ways to reduce exposures to pesticides in their homes and at work, with an emphasis on protecting children. The families received a Spanish language comic book that reinforced the pesticide safety information, emphasizing the health effects of acute and chronic pesticide exposure and steps to protect farmworker children from pesticide exposure. The project resulted in a significant increase in knowledge regarding the routes of exposure, the vulnerability of children, the signs and symptoms of pesticide poisonings and the ways to minimize pesticide exposures. Additionally, the project showed improved behaviors aimed at minimizing pesticide exposure through accidental poisonings in the home. This pilot project proved the efficacy of an in-home, one-on-one approach with a culturally appropriate educational comic book as an instrument to help transfer education to the community. Moreover, the educational method involving promotoras offers a training-of- trainer approach that is easy to implement and potentially replicate.

Occupational Safety and Health Education and Training for Underserved Populations

“…A large body of lay health promoter research supports the idea that people are most receptive to receiving information from individuals of their own cultural group [18, 21, 23–25, 27, 58]. …”

Surveillance Data on Pesticide and Agricultural Chemical Releases and Associated Public Health Consequences in Selected US States, 2003–2007

“…As a result, attempts to create a universal approach to prevent exposures have faced several barriers, such as demographic, belief, language, and educational diversity. Evidence from multiple qualitative studies [5,18,19] indicates the need for a multifaceted approach to prevention strategies for worker safety training and safe handling practices. The appropriate approach should be determined by collaboration of local and state stakeholders who can best tailor interventions to the needs within their geographic area.…”

Beyond polarization: using Q methodology to explore stakeholders’ views on pesticide use, and related risks for agricultural workers, in Washington State’s tree fruit industry

“…This means that improvements are unevenly distributed, dependent on how individual farms institutionalize safety measures, how individual workers use them, and how regulators enforce them (EPA n.d.; CDC 1999; Murphy-Greene and Leip 2006; Liebman et al 2007). As such, the task of minimizing health and safety risks in tree fruit orchards requires a broader examination of risk perception and the nature of risk itself.…”