Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

C. Eduardo Siqueira, MD, ScD, Department of Community Health and Sustainability, UMass Lowell, 1 University Avenue, Kitson 200, Lowell, MA 01854, 978-934-3147, carlos_siqueira@uml.edu and Fausto Da Rocha, Brazilian Immigrant Center, 9 Gardner Street suite 7, Boston, MA 02134.

Project COBWEB is an environmental justice partnership between the University of Massachusetts Lowell, the Brazilian Immigrant Center (BIC), the Lowell Community Health Center and the Massachusetts Coalition of Occupational Safety and Health (MassCOSH). This Project was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and is currently in its third year. It aims at researching work environment hazards faced by Brazilian immigrant workers who work in housecleaning, construction and restaurants in Massachusetts and informing them about the hazards and solutions to reduce or eliminate them. During the first couple of years Project COBWEB struggled to build a Board representing these and other new partners (such as the Massachusetts Department of Public Health). This Board was conceived as the main structure of the partnership. Project COBWEB has also developed a variety of activities to inform Brazilian immigrant workers about health and safety hazards in the workplace: weekly newspaper columns and a radio show at the UMass Lowell radio station, many church meetings, a community-driven play that became a video, brochures, group discussions, and a website. This presentation summarizes the objectives of Project COBWEB, discusses the development of the partnership during the three years, and examines the communication and evaluation activities conducted by the project. The authors evaluate the formal and informal mechanisms created to structure this partnership, the communication methods used to involve community members with the project, and the initial findings of the evaluation of the partnership.

Learning Objectives:

• a) Examine the challenges in the development of a partnership between Brazilian and American community groups, a university, and healthcare providers.
• b) Discuss the different methods available and the challenges to communicate health and safety information to immigrant workers.

Keywords: Occupational Health, Immigrants

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation