295499
From agricultural fields to urban asphalt:The role of worker education to promote California's heat illness prevention standard
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
: 2:30 p.m. - 2:50 p.m.
Kevin Riley, PhD MPH,
Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
This paper describes an innovative approach to reach and educate workers and worker advocates about California's outdoor heat illness prevention standard. In 2010, Cal/OSHA initiated a statewide education campaign to reduce heat-related illnesses and fatalities and increase awareness of the standard's requirements. In Southern California, the UCLA Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program (LOSH) focused on three principal strategies of community-based outreach, popular education, and organizational capacity building. Central to the LOSH approach was the integration of health promotores into core program planning and training activities and the expansion of campaign activities to a wide variety of rural and urban workers. We describe each of these strategies and analyze the possibilities and constraints of worker education to support implementation of this standard, particularly given the vulnerabilities of the impacted workforce, the often precarious nature of employment arrangements for these workers, and the resource limitations of Cal/OSHA
Learning Areas:
Occupational health and safety
Learning Objectives:
Describe LOSH’s community-based outreach, popular education, and organizational capacity building strategies to improve implementation of California’s heat illness prevention standard.
Assess the opportunities and constraints of worker education to support implementation of a standard.
Keyword(s): Occupational Safety
Presenting author's disclosure statement:Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am qualified to present this content because I was the lead author on this paper and have served as a member of our heat illness prevention campaign team over the last three years.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines,
and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed
in my presentation.
