Preliminary Tests of an Ecological Model of Hispanic Farmworker Health

Abstract

The proposed model is a useful tool for organizing variables and giving direction to farmworker health research. Suggestions for future research are made.

Working to eat: Vulnerability, food insecurity, and obesity among migrant and seasonal farmworker families

“…Care must be taken to protect them from discrimination, including ''blaming the victim'' in conducting research on obesity. An ecological model [Ward, 2007] is appropriate to investigate obesity as an outcome of occupational exposure that considers the cultural lifestyle and vulnerability of farmworkers without ''blaming the victim.'' Ecological models, such as proposed by Ward [2007, p. 555], structure the complexities of health problems with multi-level complex etiologies; demonstrate the interrelationships and constraints among social and cultural structures, the physical environment, and individual behavioral choices.…”

“…Illnesses and injuries may stem from agricultural environmental exposures within the home and on the farm, but the health of the workers overall and their abilities to prevent illness and injury often stem from the conditions imposed by the culture of migrant farmwork, which includes dependency and poverty [Villarejo et al, 2000;Averill, 2002;Wirth et al, 2007]. An ecological approach that includes food and nutrition systems and dietary decision making [Ward, 2007] may improve the health of MSFW families.…”

Employment and Family Conditions Are Related to Health Care Utilization Among Foreign-Born Farmworker Men

“…The HFH, developed by Ward (2007), includes four major categories of potential determinants of farmworker health-biogenetic (age, sex), social (legal status, housing, working conditions, education), cultural (language, family separation, social support), and economic (income, assets)-and two intermediate variable categories: individual response (psychosocial stress, health behaviors) and access to care (insurance, use of services).…”

“…To date, no studies have focused specifically on health care utilization among farmworker men. Using the Hispanic Farmworker Health (HFH) model (Ward, 2007), the purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of employment and family conditions on health care utilization among foreign-born farmworker men. full time and being employed directly by the vineyard or winery (instead of a contractor) may be a proxy for higher wages (and consequently, better economic status).…”

Social Justice as a Wider Lens of Support for Childbearing Women

“…The ecological model emphasizes assessments of the environment and widely de¢nes environment as consisting of the microsystem (characteristics of individuals), mesosystem (settings in which interac-tions occur), macrosystem (culture, socioeconomic status, race, education, neighborhoods), and exosystem (people and places in which the individual does not interact but in£uences them). Although the ecological model was developed to describe factors that in£uence individual di¡erences in child development, such a model is applicable to other interactive systems and has been extensively applied in the literature (e.g., Beaton et al, 2008;Cappella, Frazier, Atkins, Schoenwald, & Glisson, 2008;Cash & Wilke, 2003;Ward, 2007;Wen, Van Duker, & Olson, 2009;Wilson, 2008). We posit that examining the nursing care of childbearing women in reference to Bronfenbrenner's ecological model has relevance.…”