“We Just Have to Continue Working”: Farmworker Self-Care and Heat-Related Illness

Details

• Personal Author:
  Courville MD ; Schenker M ; Wadsworth G
• Description:
  Heat-related illness (also called heat illness) is a recurring and avoidable condition that results in multiple deaths in California farm fields every year. We conducted five focus groups as part of the California Heat Illness Prevention Study (CHIPS) in Fresno, California, during the summer of 2013. We used qualitative coding methods to analyze focus group transcript data with consideration of workers' behaviors and beliefs, workplace safety training experiences, employer-employee relations, and workplace conditions and organization. Discrete and complex factors related to worker self-care were identified, and suggest that heat illness cannot be viewed as simply a biomedical or behavioral issue, and that preventive health interventions in agriculture also need to take into account power and control structures existing in the industry. Findings indicate that prevention plans should be guided by strategies that integrate worker control with work-site organization and employer relations, as opposed to strategies that focus exclusively on traditional modes of training to advance prevention. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Agriculture Farmers Heat Stress Disorders Hot Temperature Occupational Health Preventive Medicine Safety
• Keywords:
  Agricultural Workers Author Keywords: California Agriculture Farmworker Farm Workers Heat-related Illness Heat Exposure Heat Illness Heat Stress Hot Environments Injury Prevention Preventive Measures Qualitative Analysis Safety Training Wage Labor Worker Control Work Organization

  More +
• ISSN:
  2152-0798
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Cooperative Agreement
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  California ; OSHA Region 9
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  143-164
• Volume:
  6
• Issue:
  2
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20062192
• Citation:
  J Agric Food Syst Community Dev 2016 Apr; 6(2):143-164
• Contact Point Address:
  Michael D. Courville, California Institute for Rural Studies, P.O. Box 1047, Davis, California 95617-1047 USA
• Email:
  mcourville@cirsinc.org
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2016
• NORA Priority Area:
  Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing
• Performing Organization:
  University of California - Davis
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20010930
• Source Full Name:
  Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
• End Date:
  20270929
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:8adca9582e35175a1ef2c63d8c1af9fc30676744c0a5d41d0229731c6aae42bd2517384b930ba990c3f2cc862f3bac9db9301b9cf2032ea3ed638d5f808f8177
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/225489/cdc_225489_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 494.44 KB ]