National Health Service Corps released the 2015 Application and Program Guidance for the HHSC Scholarship Program. The application cycle will close on May 7, 2015, at 7:30 p.m. ET."The NHSC Scholarship Program awards scholarship to health professions students who want to pursue their passion and work as a primary care provider without the burden of overwhelming debt."

Public Health Online includes expert-driven data and information about careers in the field, online learning options, and how students can gain valuable professional experience even before graduation. Some key features include:

-          An in-depth look at public health issues and the importance of public health education

-          A detailed examination of high-quality, available online public health degrees and specializations

-          Tips for choosing a high-quality, affordable online program that meets the student’s education and career goal

-          A public health career fit quiz

http://www.publichealthonline.org/degree-programs/masters/

On Monday August 18, 2014 MCN submitted technical comments to the EPA regarding the proposed changes to the Worker Protection Standard.  View MCN's recommendations for advancing stronger safeguards to protect farmworkers from pesticide exposure. 

Published July 15, 2014

MCN holds the position that immigrant children fleeing violence in their home countries must receive priority consideration for their safety and health. We have provided several links with additional resources on this issue.

New bilingual resource available April 2014!

Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) has been using theater as an educational tool with farmworkers for over twenty years. By drawing on techniques of popular theater, SAF performs culturally appropriate, lively skits and facilitates theater workshops at farm labor camps. These performances spur conversations about mental and physical health, living and working conditions, and farmworker movements for social justice.

Many of SAF’s performances have focused on health issues, and they aim for this guide to offer dynamic tools for health care providers, educators, outreach workers, and public health innovators. Practitioners can also use these techniques with other populations across the social justice spectrum. For both organizers and educators, SAF hopes that popular theater can bolster the messages and information that you so readily share and provide a dynamic approach to outreach. Resources include songs, scripts, theater games and icebreakers. Printed copies are free, but SAF accepts small contributions to cover shipping and handling ($5-10/copy).

Available in print and online

Contact: Laxmi Haynes , 919-660-3660

Part 1 of the 6 webinar series: Essential Clinical Issues in Migration Health

DATE RECORDED: March 19, 2014
PRESENTED BY:  Deliana Garcia, MA, International Research and Development, Migrant Clinicians Network

View Recorded Webinar  

 Participant Evaluation  

 Presentation Slides (PDF)

**Note: Due to technical difficulities the first 7 minutes of the presentation are not recorded. Please refer to the pdf of the slides for the content that was covered in those 7 minutes.

Over the last 30 years, considerable attention has been paid in the clinical setting to cultural competency- the ability to mitigate against the effects of the sociocultural differences between clinicians and patients and to take into account how culture affects the symptoms presented or the patients’ attitude about health care.  More recently, scholars and clinicians have encouraged those in practice or health professions training to focus not only on the behaviors and beliefs of cultural groups but more importantly to consider the structural determinants, prejudices, injustices and blind spots, the “pathologies of social systems” that affect health outcomes and the stigma experienced by patients. The session will introduce participants to the broad framework of structural competency and the five core structural competencies.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify the structures that shape clinical interactions;
2. Discuss the means of developing an extra-clinical language of structure;
3. Rearticulate “cultural” formulations in structural terms;
4. Explain the process of observing and imagining structural interventions; and
5. Describe the concept of structural humility.

Este libro cómic bilingüe a todo color trata la indemnización laboral por accidente, los derechos y responsabilidades de los trabajadores inmigrantes que trabajan en granjas lecheras. Cuenta la historia de un trabajador mexicano de una granja lechera que se lesiona en el trabajo y los pasos que él y su empleador dan para asegurarse de que reciba sus beneficios y la granja mejore su seguridad. Incluye historias aplicables en todo Estados Unidos y otras específicas de cada estado. 

MCN's Director of Environmental and Occupational Health, Amy K. Liebman, appeared on the radio broadcast Epicenter: West Marin Issues on KWMR 90.5 FM to talk pesticides and the Worker Protection Standard. Liebman was joined by Hector Sanchez of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement. Host Frederick Smith discusses with Liebman and Sanchez a variety of pesticide-related issues, including protections for farmworkers and their families, farmworkers' risks of pesticide exposures, how pesticides are regulated, their health effects on farmworkers and their families, and what healthcare providers can do to mitigate, diagnose, manage, and report pesticide exposures.

During the interview Liebman referenced the Agricultural Health Study, which is available here.

Dramatic, visual and culturally relevant, fotonovelas are a successful means of communicating health information. The following fotonovela materials are downloadable.

Provided by Farmworker Justice 

Dramatic, visual and culturally relevant, fotonovelas are a successful means of communicating health information. The following fotonovela materials are downloadable. 
 

Provided by Farmworker Justice

Comprehensive Spanish-language curriculum for individuals interested in training promotores de salud in HIV prevention. The curriculum is based on popular education techniques, and is culturally competent and linguistically sensitive.

 Provided by Farmworker Justice

This is the final webinar in a series of seven in our Clinician Orienatation to Migration Health.

DATE RECORDED: Wednesday, August 7th, 2013
PRESENTED BY: Edward Zuroweste, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Migrant Clinicians Network

To view the recorded version of this webinar, click here

The Occupational Health and Safety Resource Center is a virtual repository of Spanish educational materials, data sources, and links to bilingual informational websites on occupational health and safety issues related to agricultural work. It also contains an ample list of national and state agencies that have produced materials in Spanish for farmworkers’ health-related problems.

MCNs own Deliana Garcia helped in being a part of the advisory committee to this resource center.

What is the objective?  To facilitate a central access point to high quality Spanish educational materials on agricultural occupational health and safety issues for people conducting work on health promotion and prevention activities and on workers’ rights and problems related to agricultural work.

Who are the target audiences? Health-outreach workers (promotores), community advocates, health providers, contractors/employers, farmworkers and their families, and others interested in the health and safety issues of agricultural workers.

What areas are included? The materials cover five key relevant areas: 1) Farmworkers’ rights; 2) Injury prevention; 3) Respiratory illnesses; 4) Heat illnesses; and 5) Pesticide exposure.

How did we do it? To develop the Virtual Resource Center, the process entailed:

• Asset mapping of educational, informational and research materials available in Spanish related to the five mentioned areas.
• Selection of materials using the following criteria: accurate information, culturally and linguistically adequate (including literacy level), relevant to health area, and visually acceptable quality.
• Insertion of resources into an excel format under five different categories, including source, type of material, and description of its content.

Development of new materials: to complement the existing educational resources, we developed a “Promotores Training Manual on Occupational Health and Safety of Agricultural Workers”.  Based on an ethnographic framework, the manual presents the perspective of agricultural workers on the five mentioned areas (their stories) and provides community health workers with tools on how to conduct prevention and promotion activities. It also refers them to existing resources.  We also produced a series of Spanish and selected indigenous languages Public Service Announcements (PSAs) on these areas.

Glenn Shor, Phd, MPP, Visiting Policy Analyst at the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

This report was funded, in part, by The California Wellness Foundation, for UCSF Community Occupational Health Project, Barbara Burgel, Nan Lashuay, and Robert Harrison, 2004 - 2006.