Structural Competency and Agricultural Health and Safety: An Opportunity to Foster Equity within Agriculture

ABSTRACT

The future of agricultural work in the United States (U.S.) must account for at least two important trends: 1) the persistence of the industry being riddled with high rates of injury and illness and 2) the growing proportion of hired farmworkers compared to family farmworkers working in these dangerous environments. These workers confront structural disadvantages that impede social justice and prosperity. Social structures like policies, economic systems, institutions, and social hierarchies create health disparities, often along the lines of social categories. The result is an already dangerous industry with vulnerable workers facing unjust risks, especially those that are undocumented. Agricultural health and safety professionals and other stakeholders should engage structural competency curricula in order to increase awareness of impact of structures and be better positioned to improve farmworker health and wellbeing. Similar work has been successful in the training healthcare professionals, e.g. the Structural Competency Working Group (SCWG). New strategies are needed to improve farmworker wellbeing and retain an adequate agricultural workforce. A greater understanding of the social and structural concerns that farmworkers face is an important step towards occupational and social justice. It is also clear that it will require collaboration and community-based efforts creating a larger team of people using similar concepts related to the structural influences on whether health and wellbeing are distributed equitably. This work is being moved forward in healthcare, social work, worker organizations, and community-based initiatives. Agricultural health and safety professionals have a vital contribution to make if they join the ranks.

Keywords:

• Structural competency
• farmworkers
• training curriculum
• equity
• health disparities

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr. Sarait Martinez from the Binational Center for the Development of Oaxacan Indigenous Communities/Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño for feedback on drafts of this article. We also wish to thank the two anonymous peer reviewers for their insightful feedback and the editorial staff from the Journal of Agromedicine for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest were reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Dr. Bendixsen’s time was partially supported by the Upper Midwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center through the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) award number U54 010170. Dr. Ramos’ time was partially supported by the Central States Center for Agricultural Safety & Health through the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) award number U54 OH010162 funding associated with the work featured in this article. Dr. Holmes’ time was partially supported through the National Science Foundation award number 212114, the William T. Grant Scholar Award, and the Cliff Family Foundation