The Chinese Restaurant Worker Project is a two year pilot project, in the traditions of community based participatory research (CBPR) and social ecological theory, that places a strong focus on immigrant worker health. Immigrants accounted for 86% of all newly employed workers hired from 2000 to 2005 (1) and in urban areas, restaurants remain a primary source of employment. In San Francisco's Chinatown, close to a third of workers are employed in this sector (12). The high rates of injuries and work related illnesses in restaurant workers often are compounded for low-wage Chinese restaurant workers due to language barriers and low educational level. The project's aims include: developing an effective partnership between community, health department, and academic partners; creating and training a Restaurant Worker Leadership Group (RWLG) which will play a key role throughout the project; conducting a study of the association between physical and psychosocial restaurant conditions and occupational illness and injury in Chinese restaurant workers; providing culturally relevant worker education; widely disseminating project findings and using them to help inform subsequent research and action; and evaluating the project using both conventional and participatory approaches. We will collect both individual-level data through a survey of at least 400 Chinatown restaurant workers and observer-based restaurant-level data (n=131) during restaurant inspections to explore the relationship between restaurant characteristics (e.g., restaurant size and type), workplace hazards, worker characteristics and perceptions (e.g., gender, seniority and perceived risk), and health outcomes (occupational illness and injury). An innovative feature of the study is the development of a new Restaurant Worker Health and Safety Checklist to supplement the health department's routine food safety inspections in all 131 Chinatown restaurants. Multi-level analysis will be conducted on the associations between occupational illness and injury in Chinese restaurant workers and the social and environmental conditions in which they work. Findings of this study will help lay the groundwork for a larger study testing the efficacy of restaurant- and policy-level interventions to improve restaurant worker health and safety. ? ? ? ?
| Gaydos, Megan; Bhatia, Rajiv; Morales, Alvaro et al. (2011) Promoting health and safety in San Francisco's Chinatown restaurants: findings and lessons learned from a pilot observational checklist. Public Health Rep 126 Suppl 3:62-9 |
