Place of Residence, Working Conditions and the Burden of Back Pain among Hired Farmworkers in the United States

ABSTRACT

Objectives: Back pain is the leading occupational health problem among agricultural workers. Current study aimed to assess the burden of farm work-related back pain and to investigate its associations with living residence location and work conditions among farmworkers.

Methods: We used the National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) data from 1999 to 2004, 2008–2010, and 2014. Work-related back pain was defined as a back pain that was developed when performing farm work in the 12 months prior to the interview, and it caused pain or discomfort for at least five consecutive days. To assess the associations of place of residence and working conditions (i.e. work equipment and access to toilet and water for washing hands at work) with back pain, we analyzed the data using mixed-effects logistic regression models while adjusting for age, gender, race, birthplace (US vs. foreign country), education, marital status, work authorization (yes vs. no), below poverty income, whether the worker was hired by a farm labor contractor or not, and weekly working hours.

Results: The standardized annual back pain prevalence during the study period ranged from 2.6% to 11.3%. In the adjusted model, farmworkers who lived in a residence located on the farm, who did not have access to toilet at work, and who paid for work equipment had higher odds of back pain than their counterparts.

Conclusion: Back pain is particularly common among farmworkers with poor working and living conditions. Interventions should target the identified high-risk groups to mitigate their burden of back pain.

KEYWORDS:

• Musculoskeletal problems
• back pain
• occupational back pain
• working conditions

Authors contributions

VK conceived the study, performed data analysis and drafted the manuscript. OAA supervised the study, contributed to study conception, provided consultation for data analysis and critically reviewed and revised the manuscript drafts for important intellectual content. All authors approved the final.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Institution and Ethics approval and informed consent

The University of California, Los Angeles office of the Human Research Protection Program deemed the study exempt.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This publication was supported by the Pilot Project Research Training Program of the Southern California NIOSH Education and Research Center (SCERC), Grant Agreement Number T42 OH008412 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official view of CDC.