An estimated 4.2 million seasonal and migrant farmworkers and their dependents work across most of the United States. This population is largely minority (90% Hispanic), medically underserved, and at risk for a variety of environmental health problems. Casa a Campo builds on a community-university partnership that has worked to reduce one environmental health risk, pesticide exposure, among farmworkers in North Carolina. The activities proposed here will expand the scope of work to include members of farmworker families, and enlarge the partnership to include providers of healthcare to farmworker families, and farmworker advocacy and educational organizations. The Casa a Campo partnership will address five specific aims: (1) to conduct research to document knowledge and beliefs about pesticide exposure, document exposure of young children, and document other environmental health concerns of farmworker families; (2) to develop culturally appropriate materials and programs to reduce pesticide exposure among these families; (3) to develop materials and programs to better prepare healthcare providers to recognize, treat, and prevent pesticide exposure of farmworker families; (4) to increase the capacity of community-based organizations to involve the community in the identification, assessment, and reduction of environmental health risks; and (5) to conduct process and outcome evaluation of community participation in this partnership so that the model of partnership can be used by other community-based organizations to reduce environmental health risks in their own communities. These efforts will be structured by a multi-mode, multi-domain model of community participation developed previously by this group. The model is designed to be proactive and to encourage and develop community participation in different domains (consultation, strategic planning, implementation) through different modes (partnership, Junta Directiva, advisory committee, community forums, research, training of community members, and educating college students from farmworker families).

R25OH007611

2001-09-30

2005-09-29