Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #108403

Jenny Chacon, MPH, Carolina Guzman, MPH, and Rajiv Bhatia, MD, MPH. Program on Health, Equity and Sustainability, San Francisco Department of Public Health, 1390 Market St., Suite 910, San Francisco, CA 94102, 415-252-3912, jenny.chacon@sfdph.org

Issues: The demographics of day laborers, mostly composed of Latino immigrants, who work on a daily or short-term basis for multiple employers, and are an integral part of the United States economy. They live and work on the fringes of many cities and are vulnerable to workplace hazards and poor health due since day laborers are often hired to do the most physically demanding parts of the job such as excavation and hauling. Despite the challenges that day laborers face, this immigrant community is filled with an untapped pool of informal leaders that creates resilience in this community.

Description: The San Francisco Department of Public Health commenced a participatory research project, Jornaleros Unidos con el Pueblo (Day Laborers United with the Community) to improve working conditions and health for day laborers. The project's goals were to develop strategies that reflected the knowledge, needs, and participation of day laborers. Through evidence-based research, researchers have developed preliminary understanding of how the day laborers' hazardous working conditions are impacted by social and structural contexts such as the laborers' economic needs, employers' interests in flexible labor, and an institutional focus on more formal employment sectors. This resulted in identifying several strategies to address workplace hazards as well as their social and structural context.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe demographic composition of this transient immigrant community and its informal leadership structures,
• Provide models for the development of community based participatory research around economic injustice issues among day laborers;
• Provide evidence-based interventions that can be integrated among various stakeholders, (e.g. laborers, employers, service providers, and institutions) how they can address underlying social and structural contexts;
• Provide tools for evaluating the collective capacity of day laborers, employers and institutions to address unhealthy working conditions.

Keywords: Interventions, Migrant Workers

Related Web page: www.dph.sf.ca.us/ehs/phesmain.htm

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.