Texas Migrant Farmworkers Benefit from Occupational Health and One Health Approaches in Improving Their Healthcare

By: Garrett Coleman

Figure 1: Daughter of citrus worker recieves first dose of Pfizer pediatric at on-bodega (packing house) vaccine clinic in the Rio Grande Valley.

Dr. David Douphrate, MPT, MBA, PhD is an associate professor and Dr. Anabel Rodriguez, MPH, PhD is an assistant professor at UTHealth School of Public Health in San Antonio. Dr. Douphrate’s research is primarily focuses upon worker health and safety issues in the agricultural sector. Dr. Rodriguez’s research focuses on improving the health and safety of vulnerable working populations—in particular, Spanish and Mayan (indigenous) language-speaking, Hispanic working populations.

Dr. Rodriguez, a former migrant farmworker and daughter of Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrants from South Texas, recently shared her valuable perspective of these workers’ lifestyles, and family life. She explained that many migrant farm workers travel seasonally to different regions during separate harvests. The mobile nature of their work and their diverse interaction with a variety of livestock species, put these migrant farm workers as at health risks that are best studied with One Health and Occupational Health approaches.

In particular, Drs. Douphrate and Rodriguez have performed extensive research regarding the health of dairy farm workers in the Texas panhandle. Their studies have revealed that the workers experience multiple barriers to quality healthcare. Their rural location and mobile lifestyle make it difficult for the workers and their families to routinely access healthcare and to obtain the necessary education and public health interventions to prevent communicable diseases. This is unfortunate in that such animal workers are at a greater risk of contracting a zoonotic disease due to their prolonged contact with animals.

Figure 2: Dairy worker receives first dose of COVID-19 vaccine at an on-farm hosted vaccine clinic in the Texas Panhandle.

One solution to these barriers is to improve communication among existing health care centers and to employ mobile health care clinics to provide basic services to migrant workers and their families. Dr. Rodriguez discussed the power of “word of mouth” in attracting the attention of workers in these rural areas. Workers would bring their entire families to receive vaccinations when they heard such vaccines were free. Utilizing these mobile clinics to care for a mobile population and improving communication are key to improving healthcare access for such workers and their families.

Drs. Douphrate and Rodriguez are currently collaborating with Professor Gregory Gray and Dr. Laura Pulscher at UTMB to study dairy farm workers and their dairy cattle for the newly recognized influenza D virus.  Using a One Health approach, this project will assess the health of the cattle, the cattle workers, and the farm environment.