The overall goal of The Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety (WCAHS) at UC Davis is to improve the health and safety of farmers, farm family members, and hired farmworkers and their families in western agriculture. Western agriculture includes practices and a workforce different from much of the rest of the country. UC Davis is uniquely situated to address these issues because of the co-location of its Schools of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and its location in the most productive agricultural region in the world. The multidisciplinary expertise of the Center faculty enables varied, largely field-oriented research projects and interventions. Several areas of Center efforts have been of particular note including bilingual/bicultural health and safety efforts among hired (immigrant) farmworkers, respiratory disease from exposures in dry farming environments, and engineering better ergonomic solutions to reduce acute and cumulative trauma injuries. A major effort of this renewal is a prospective cohort of immigrant Hispanic farmworkers and their families. This important study will allow determination of disease and injury risks, including the contribution of environmental, behavioral and healthcare related factors. The study will integrate with other Center projects addressing toxic, ergonomic and environmental factors, and has already attracted add-on studies of dental and nutritional health. Another new study will evaluate exposures and respiratory disease in large dairies, a major change in California agriculture that raises concerns among workers and nearby residents. The Center will continue its successful efforts to design better engineered solutions to the musculoskeletal stresses of labor-intensive agriculture, and to transfer this improved technology to the workplace. We will continue to characterize respiratory toxicants in Western agriculture, and to apply these findings to the farm. Newer and more efficient pesticide bioassays will be developed, and linked to studies of exposure to agricultural workers. The Center will continue its innovative educational efforts to improve health and safety training to non-English speaking farmworkers. Agriculture is one of the most hazardous occupations, and employs 1+ million workers in California. This Center has a direct public health importance by increasing the understanding of what causes disease in this population, and applying those findings to interventions developed to reduce injury and illness in the population.
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