Measuring Farmworker Health & Wellbeing

Migrant and seasonal farm workers (FWs) experience unique employment conditions that challenge their ability to live healthy, fulfilled lives. Extreme poverty, stringent immigration laws, atypical employment policies, hazardous work, and lack of oversight, enforcement, and social support add layers of disadvantage that challenge the health and wellbeing of FWs. Transience, non-citizen status, residence in remote rural settings, and limited access to healthcare and social services are further impediments. FWs are among the most disadvantaged worker populations in the U.S. Valid survey instruments are critical to establishing norms, benchmarks, and targets for intervention. However, off-the-shelf tools that account for FWs’ linguistic, educational, and cultural norms are limited. The overall goal of this project is to develop a survey tool and to determine the factors influencing the health and wellbeing of FWs. Specific aims are to: 1) translate, adapt, and test/validate existing survey instruments that measure the factors influencing the health and wellbeing of hired migrant and seasonal FWs; 2) determine optimal sampling and recruitment strategies to reach FW populations; and 3) determine the effects of social conditions and workplace hazards on FW health and wellbeing. We will translate, test, deploy and analyze a survey tool that includes items from the NIOSH Well-Being Questionnaire, work history, illness/injury experience, and work precarity.