Tufts University, in concert with its partners, the Immigrant Service Providers Group (ISPG) as the community-based organization and the Cambridge Health Allianceas the health care provider will implement a four-year, three-part program to address occupational health risks to immigrant workers in Somerville, MA. Somerville, known as a """"""""gateway"""""""" community due to the diverse variety of immigrant populations and community organizations, as well as remarkable temporal shifts in its immigrant population, represents a unique laboratory for this activity. For example, this project leverages existing peer youth and adult educational training and advocacy programs for immigrants. These programs have been successfully implemented by members of the ISPG (Haitian Coalition, Latino Coalition, and the Community Action Agency of Somerville) on issues ranging from tobacco use to ambient environmental hazards. We propose to extend the impact of these successes in designinga sustainable, community-based capability to assess, characterize, and reduce occupational health risks in immigrant populations. Further, we believe that the very structure and organization of work influences such key issues such as immigrant empowerment and the sustainability of interventions aimed at lessening the impact of occupational injury, illness and mortality. As a result, we propose to launch a pilot Green Cleaning Cooperative to address occupational risks encountered by female immigrant workers engaged in domestic services. This aspect of our project will leverage the work of the Collaboration for Better Work Environment for Brazilians (COBWEB) project based at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and at the Brazilian Immigrant Center in Boston. Also, the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (MassCOSH) will be a key partner by contributingoccupational content, materials and trainingto this grant. The MassCOSH partnership establishes a link to another work and environment project based in Dorchester, MA. Our proposed project builds upon past successes of our partners (peer leadership) and leverages investments made in nearby projects. We will use an annual immigrant occupational assessment to identify needs and best practices in Somerville and actively seek to disseminate this information to other cities and towns with substantial immigrantpopulations in concert with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs and the Boston Public Health Commission.
