University of Massachusetts Lowell

Work Environment Justice Partnership for Brazilian Immigrants in Massachusetts

C. Eduardo Siqueira, M.D., Sc.D.
carlos_siqueira@uml.edu

Project Description

The Work Environment Justice Partnership (WEJP) for Brazilian Immigrant Workers in Massachusetts aims at educating and engaging members of a growing Brazilian immigrant community in Massachusetts in identifying, recognizing, analyzing, and designing a research agenda to prevent work environment hazards that affect Brazilian immigrant workers and their families. This project brings Brazilian immigrant workers together to participate in the investigation of the numerous hazards they face at work and the development of feasible and viable solutions to the health problems generated by daily exposure to those hazards. The partnership is composed of the Brazilian Immigrant Center, the Lowell Community Health Center, the Massachusetts General Hospital Chelsea Health Center and the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. This project accomplish these goals by building a network of committed partners that contribute with their resources and assets to build the capacity, skills, and knowledge the Brazilian immigrant worker community needs to develop its own strategies to successfully address work environment problems identified. The project hired outreach workers in both healthcare providers to promote the occupational health and safety of janitors and cleaning workers, restaurant and food service workers, grounds keepers and gardeners. The Outreach Workers are bilingual and improve the cultural competency of the providers to handle Brazilian patients. The WEJP is also training a group of peer-leaders to become change agents within the Brazilian community. These peer leaders are training about 500 immigrant workers over 3.5 years. The project is sponsoring training in research methods, promote community forums, evaluate work environment hazards and develop brochures and fact sheets in Portuguese to disseminate workplace health and safety information to Brazilians in churches and schools. By the end of the project the Brazilian community in Lowell and the Chelsea area will have created a group of leaders that will pursue policies and research strategies to improve the working conditions of all Brazilian immigrant workers in Massachusetts. This project is creating knowledge, methods and strategies for coalition building that may be applicable to many other immigrant groups in the nation.

Collaborators

Fausto da Rocha
Executive Director
Brazilian Immigrant Center

Paulette Renault-Caragianes, R.N.
Lowell Community Health Center

Marcy Goldstein-Gelb
Executive Director
Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health

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