A.
Specific Aims (.75 page) Migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their families are exposed to numerous environmental and occupational health hazards, and they experience high rates of injuries and illnesses. The hazards they experience include substandard and crowded housing, exposure to pesticides, metals and other toxicants, separation from family, poverty and discrimination. As a result of these hazards, farmworkers and their family members experience high rates of traumatic injury, infectious disease, neurological illnesses, delayed neurobehavioral development, and mental illness. At the same time, farmworkers have limited access to health services due to low incomes, no health insurance, and widely dispersed migrant clinics. Efforts to document the health hazards and illnesses that farmworkers experience have expanded. However, the involvement of farmworkers in the conduct of research that addresses their health hazards and illnesses, and the communication of research results to farmworkers in forms that they can understand and use remain limited. The community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnership proposed in this application has two longterm goals. The first goal is to promote collaboration between health scientists and members of the migrant and seasonal farmworker community so that farmworkers have a greater voice in selecting and conducting research that addresses their health. The second goal is to enhance farmworkers'understanding of biomedical and behavioral science so that they can better use this knowledge to improve their health and quality of life. We will build this partnership on an existing framework of the community-based organizations and agencies that comprise the Farmworker Advocacy Network (FAN) and health scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine (WFUSM). As a first step toward attaining these long-term goals, this project will achieve three specific aims. In this project we will 1. Develop a framework for ongoing collaboration between FAN community-based organizations and agencies and WFUSM. 2. Build the capabilities among FAN community-based organizations and agencies to participate in research on the health and quality of life of migrant and seasonal farmworkers. 3. Identify, implement and evaluate effective approaches to communicate the results of health science to migrant and seasonal farmworkers. At the end of this project, the FAN/WFUSM partnership will be in a position to collaborate effectively in the conduct of research addressing farmworker health and to communicate the results of this research to farmworkers in a form that they can use. The FAN/WFUSM will also be in a position to use their collaboration to translate their research results to inform policy that will improve regulations that affect the health and quality of life of farmworkers.
