An Analysis of the Availability of Health Education Materials for Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers

ABSTRACT

Community health workers (CHWs) have reported a paucity of farmworker-specific education materials for use during health outreach to farmworkers. To improve our understanding of the availability of topically and culturally relevant health education materials for farmworkers, we identified 15 key health topics to examine across four major online health information services: MedlinePlus.gov, Migrant Clinicians Network, National Agricultural Safety Database, and National Center for Farmworker Health. We established inter-coder reliability and conducted coding for health education materials by topic and identified the percentage of materials specifically designed for farmworkers. The availability of materials ranged from, on the low end, accessing clinic services, having one health education material total across all four online services, to alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, having 50 materials across the four online services. Online health information services ranged from 0.6% of the materials designed specifically for farmworkers (MedlinePlus.gov) to 42.9% (Migrant Clinicians Network). The findings from this study underscore the need to support community-based projects centering CHWs’ roles as advocates and facilitators to develop educational materials for farmworker health outreach.

KEYWORDS:

• Community health workers
• farmworkers
• health education

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Paula Acevedo and Abdul Zahra for assistance with establishing coding reliability.

Disclosures

C.E. LePrevost and J.G.L. Lee are unpaid members of the governing board of the NC Farmworker Health Program, Office of Rural Health, NC Department of Health and Human Services. An earlier version of this manuscript partially fulfilled the degree requirements of the ECU Honors College.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1059924X.2023.2169424

Correction Statement

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

Additional information

Funding

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number G08LM013198. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.