Project to Reduce Eye Injuries in Latino Farm Workers
Project Summary
Funded by: NIOSH Community Partners for Healthy Farming Intervention

In August of 1998, the University of Illinois at Chicago Great Lakes Center for Occupational Safety and Health, Community Health Partnership (CHP) of Illinois, Migrant Health Promotion (MHP), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Agricultural Engineering received a grant from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health to develop and implement a sustainable intervention project to reduce eye injuries in migrant farm workers. Prior studies of the Latino workforce and agriculture, in general, showed eye injuries to be among the most prevalent, and potentially devastating health and safety problems. Eye injuries are also among the most preventable types of injuries.

At the outset, the Project decided to use Camp Health Aides (Promotores de Salud), peer health workers, to execute parts of the study. In year one, farm owners known to CHP and MHP were contacted regarding the project; this was done with the assistance of the Farm Bureau and Cooperative Extension. Members of the project team toured several of the farms and migrant camps. A census of farm workers on farms in Will and Kankakee Counties (Illinois) and Monroe and Lenawee Counties (Michigan) was conducted according to pre-existing CHP and MHP protocols. To determine farm workers beliefs and concerns around eye injuries, and to clarify Spanish jargon related to health and work, Spanish speaking ethnographers interviewed individual and small groups of farm workers. These included farm workers that had been treated for eye injuries during the most recent growing season. In addition, a questionnaire was developed and administered to 44 farm workers at the end of the last growing season, in large part, to gather more information from farm workers about their perception of risk, their actual eye injuries, and to get a sense of what sort of intervention might "work." An extensive, annotated bibliography was developed.

Approximately 550 farm workers (not including non-working family members) were counted among some 40 farms. The major crops/products represented in the sample included: apple orchards, packing houses, nurseries, greenhouse operations, sod farms, and flower, herb, fruit and vegetable farms. Through the early interviews, the language/jargon related to health and agricultural work was turned into a vocabulary list that would help elucidate beliefs about health, risk, and prevention. According to the interviews, farm workers’ work practices and willingness to use personal protective equipment (like safety glasses) during work depended on several factors:

  • Influential people: peers/co-workers, supervisors, farm owners, health care professionals
  • Perceptions of the benefits of PPE: to minimize exposure to pesticides, dust, and dirt; to minimize exposure of children, and to reduce lost work days due to illness and injury
  • Perceptions of risk when using PPE: slow down the pace of work, discomfort especially in heat, impairment of vision (limiting visual field, fogging up), cost of the eyewear, impairment of respiration (glasses might trap fumes/smell inside)
  • Influential events: use of PPE becomes mandatory, pesticide application, personal experience with acute injury, observed and/or perceived increase of risk, multi-tasking (no time to put on and remove PPE), the rate at which irritations/discomforts resolve, prior experience with PPE

The pilot questionnaire, administered by the promotores to 50 farm workers between the two states queried demographic information, language ability, eye injury occurrences, eye hazards, and preventive strategies.

Less than half of the pilot group queried had ever used safety glasses at work. Almost every individual described an eye injury s/he had experienced in the prior season. The most commonly noted problems were:

  • Red, tearing eyes (60%)
  • Chemicals in the eyes (50%)
  • Foreign Bodies (30%)
  • Eye Pain

A review of farm safety interventions, and interventions in other work settings such as industry, suggest that a multi-faceted strategy should be used to prevent workplace injuries and illnesses. Passing out personal protective equipment, like safety glasses, is does not assure their use.

Based on the findings of Year One of the project, as well as a review of health and safety intervention programs, the members of the Project Team have constructed a strategy and protocol for implementing an intervention to prevent eye injuries and illnesses among farm workers that will be sustainable once the project is completed. To that end, we will engage in the following activities:

  1. The distribution of protective eye wear to every farm worker with a fitting and educational materials
  2. Ongoing training about the use of the eye wear protecting the eyes. This will include one individual encounter between the Camp Health Aide and farm worker, and two training sessions conducted by Camp Health Aids with the goal of having each participating farm worker attend one session.
  3. Interaction with growers to gain support for a comprehensive program

To evaluate these efforts, we will determine the impact of participation in training, how frequently safety glasses are used, the change in reported eye injuries, and growers’ attitudes about eye safety and health.

Phase Three activities will be constructed based on results at the end of this season.

In November of 2000, members of this project joined efforts with the Rural Women’s Health Project to establish a web-resource on eye health and safety for migrant farm workers. This site may be visited at:http://www.FENet.org

Project presentations at conferences:

Susan Bauer MA, MPH (Community Health Partnership of Illinois), Reducing Eye Injuries and Illnesses in Latino Farm Workers, Western Migrant Stream Forum, Portland, OR, February 2, 2001.

Rocio Jimenez, (UIC School of Public Health), Partnership Approach to Promoting Migrant Worker Health, American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, November 14, 2000.

Steven Lacey, MS (UIC School of Public Health), A Multiple Control Strategy to Reducing Eye Injuries and Illnesses in Latino Farm Workers, American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, November 14, 2000.


For further information about this project, contact: Linda Forst, MD, MS, MPH, P.I. (forst-l@uic.edu) or Joseph Zanoni, MILR (jzanoni@uic.edu), (312) 996-2613.

To download the Powerpoint presentation for this project, click here.

To view project CV, click here.

To view 2002 article summary on Eye Injury and Illness Prevention in Latino Farmworker Partnership, click here.