Men bent over picking lettuce

The Challenge of Assessing Farmworker Occupational Health Status

  • by Suzette Smiley-Jewell

Dr. Don Villarejo, long-time farmworker advocate, recently reflected on the historical efforts made by WCAHS Founding Director Dr. Marc Schenker to gain accurate information on farmworker occupational health.

When Schenker began his studies in 1990s with Villarejo in the small California town of Parlier, reliable information about farmworker health was quite limited. Using a universal sample frame of sleeping quarters, including unconventional dwellings, they found farmworkers living in poverty and substandard and unofficial housing.

Click here to read the full story published by the California Institute of Rural Studies.