Project goals:

1. Expand and apply the evidence-based findings from the completed UMASH research project, Seguridad en Las Lecherías: Immigrant Dairy Worker Health and Safety to Minnesota dairy operations.

2. Provide evidence-based worker health and safety interventions including general worker health.

3. Train and engage veterinarians to be part of a One Health team for worker health and safety, especially as it pertains to safely working around dairy cattle.

Highlights from this year:

• Partnered with Community Health Services Inc. to provide health screenings, health services, safety and health information to dairy workers, farmers and their families. This is done in conjunction with their mobile clinics on dairy farms in SE Minnesota.
• Recruited additional dairy farms for health and safety training. Eleven farms are enrolled with 144 workers.
• Engaged veterinarians as part of the dairy farm health and safety team. This includes developing and field testing a safety audit tool for veterinarians to assess safe animal handling practices and infectious disease exposures on dairies. This tool is being revised. The revised tool would allow veterinarians to provide tangible farm assessments to producers in a simple, understandable format.
• Revised and updated training and educational materials. This includes developing written training guides for producers on positive animal handling techniques aligning with our current UMASH videos. This offers an additional training tool for producers. Items incorporated for worker training by producers include learning objectives, teaching activities, and post-training assessment options.
• Engaged community and industry leaders to raise awareness and support farm recruitment. This includes dairy inspectors, dairy supply sales, nutritionist, etc.

Next year’s activities:

• Continue to recruit dairy farms.
• Further integrate and engage veterinarians into the health and safety team.
• Partner Veterinary Public Health Residents with Industrial Hygiene graduate students to develop and field test a Safety audit tool for dairy producers.
• Integrate mobile health promotion clinics with existing health structures to support continued care of workers including mental health assessment and resources. Seek additional funds to support mental health resources for immigrant dairy workers in combination with Community Health Services Inc. and Migrant Clinicians Network.