Five on Friday: To bring you into the weekend, we present you with the top five items that MCN staff shared this week, on the many happenings in migrant health and beyond. 
Jillian, Director of Education and Professional Development, forwarded on this release from the University of California Global Health Institute, which reveals the impact of state policies on health of the undocumented. No big surprise: California scored highest. The rest of the line-up is more compelling; the second-to-last place has a five-way tie! Where did your state fall in? Read the whole report to find out.
Kerry, Environmental and Occupational Health Program Associate, discovered through this Pump Handle post that 34 percent of workers at a chicken processing plant -- located three-quarters of an hour away from MCN’s Maryland office -- suffer from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, presumably a result from repetitive motions on the job. It’s not the first chicken processing plant to show high Carpal Tunnel numbers; how many studies must be done before change happens?
Candace, Specialist in Clinical Systems and Women’s Health, congratulates HRSA for its successes with the Text4Baby program, as outlined in a newly-released evaluation, which concluded that “on four critical topics - safe sleep, infant feeding, best time to deliver in a healthy pregnancy, and the meaning of full-term - Text4baby subscribers demonstrated a significantly higher level of health knowledge than women who had never heard of Text4baby and women who had heard of the program but did not sign up.” As Candace notes, it’s a “great program and particularly appropriate for our mobile patients, with text messages in both English and Spanish.”
Tiffy, Graphic Designer, noticed this article after Smart on Pesticides tagged us in a tweet. The article, entitled “Why There’s More Concern for Farmworkers After Pesticide Cancer Study,” notes that Virginia Garcia, a health center in Oregon, has recently expanded its pesticide safety education. MCN's Amy Liebman along with Matt Keifer, MD, MPH, visited Virginia Garcia last summer to train clinicians about pesticides and occupational medicine. Virginia Garcia’s Eva Galvez, MD was honored as one of MCN’s 30 Clinicians Making a Difference. In her profile, she talks a bit about their program for farmworkers.
Ed sent along the National Association of Community Health Center’s celebratory statement on the passage of Medicare and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 -- providing critical funding for Community Health Centers, National Health Service Corps and the Teaching Health Centers, and backing health centers away from that fiscal cliff.
Enjoy your weekend!