Last week, MCN’s Elaine Penn, Alma Galván, MHC, and Juliana Simmons, MSPH, CHES gathered in Washington, DC for the launch of the second year of our well received project, Worker Safety and Health in Community Health Centers: A sustainable and integrative approach to immigrant safety. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which sponsors MCN’s Worker Safety and Health program through the Susan Harwood Training Grant Program, welcomed MCN along with other grant recipients during the orientation meetings.
“Migrant Clinicians Network is thrilled to take the momentum and capitalize on the experience we’ve gained from our first year in this project, and continue to successfully build partnerships with on-the-ground clinicians and community health advocates to benefit hard-to-reach workers,” said Galván, MCN’s new Senior Program Manager of Environmental and Occupational Health. “We are looking forward to partnering with health centers and community-based organizations to assure that immigrant workers in their community have the tools to stay safe on the job.”
The Worker Safety and Health program works closely with organizations who are well integrated into their home communities, but don’t have the training or resources to address the worker health and safety challenges that their constituents face. In the first year of the project, MCN partnered with Hospital General Castañer in Puerto Rico, reaching out to the agricultural worker population about health issues like heat illness and pesticide exposure. We also joined forces with HOPE Clinic in Houston, Texas, where the focus was on nail salon workers and the health hazards at their workplaces. You can read about the latter partnership in MCN’s recent blog post, “Reaching Hard-to-Reach Workers: Success through MCN and HOPE Clinic’s Partnership [2].”
For our second year, MCN is forming new partnerships with One Community Health [3] and The Next Door, Inc. [4], both of which have focused strongly on community building and social justice in their community in Hood River, an agricultural region along the Columbia River, east of Portland, Oregon. Their outreach teams are well regarded throughout the region for their strong community ties and innovative approaches. The new partnership will provide them with additional tools, resources, and technical assistance to integrate occupational health into their outreach approach.
The project and other grant recipients are sponsored by the OSHA Susan Harwood Training Grant Program. Visit this page [5] to see the full list of grant recipients. You can also learn more about all of MCN’s Environmental and Occupational Health initiatives on the EOH initiatives webpage [6].
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