Engaging Families and Employers in Latino Construction Worker Injury Prevention

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Immigrant Latinos experience elevated rates of occupational fatality, injury and illness within the construction industry, particularly within the small-scale residential construction industry. Safety initiatives in residential construction focus on workers: the involvement of contractors and other sources of influence like family members remains a critical oversight to long-term sustainability of safety initiatives. The overall goal of the proposed research is to create capacity for sustained commitment to worker safety among small-scale residential construction contractors employing Latino workers. The project goal will be achieved through a community-based partnership of academic researchers, the Greater Tulsa Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and a translational research project that will accomplish three specific aims: 1) document strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of contractors in small-scale residential construction to enhancing fall prevention initiatives with their workers; 2) describe beliefs held by family members about the risks Latino construction workers encounter on the job, the modifiability of those risks, and the ability family members have in minimizing those risks; 3) determine the added impact of a “Lay Health Advisor” (LHA), “employer- enhanced” and “family-enhanced” intervention strategy in comparison to a control group that receives written safety education alone. These aims will be accomplished through a mixed-method design focused on Research-to-Practice (R2P). Aims 1 and 2 will be accomplished through the collection and analysis of qualitative in-depth interview data with Latino contractors (Aim 1) and family members of Latino workers (spouses most likely, Aim 2). Aim 3 will be accomplished through a community-based trial where N=40 contractor crews (consisting of 4-6 workers/crew) are the basis for randomization. Crews will be randomly assigned to one of four conditions: treatment as usual (worker education by a Lay Health Advisor (LHA)), employer-enhanced treatment (worker education by LHA combined with contractor/crew-leader safety training), family-enhanced treatment (worker education by LHA combined with family safety training), and a control group (written safety education alone). Determination of the added impact of the employer- and family- enhanced strategies will focus on differences in pretest-posttest and follow-up changes in core safety behaviors.