Reducing the risk of heat-related illness in western agricultural workers; physio

描述(由申请人提供)：尽管与高温相关疾病(HRI)的主要环境和个人风险因素是已知的，而且加州已颁布法规保护工人，但死亡和大量HRI仍在继续发生，特别是在农业领域。继续存在许多不确定因素，这些因素使工人面临HRI的风险，以及雇主利用降低风险战略保护工人的能力。关于影响HRI的因素的职业研究缺少对在不同农业环境中工作的代谢热负荷的考虑，以及影响主要是移民工人的工作实践/行为的社会文化因素。如果不彻底了解这些方面，减少农业HRI的有效战略就会受到削弱。这一多学科的努力将来自医学、流行病学、公共卫生、生理学、人类学和社区推广/教育的研究人员聚集在一起，他们在解决农业人口的HRI问题上具有独特的地位。我们的目标是获得关于内部的新数据 体温与作物类型和地理、外部热量和内部代谢负荷有关，包括工作类型和个人因素。我们的创新方法将获得有关知识、工作实践和社会文化问题的关键信息，这些问题会影响工人在预防HRI方面的决策。通过将这些方法结合起来，我们的目标是制定保护性战略，并通过外联和教育项目进行翻译和广播。这项建议的具体目标是：(1)通过对个人特征、监测器和传感器的分析，增加农场工人对环境高温和体力消耗增加的生理反应的了解，并使用开发的方案来生成和验证风险模型。2)利用重点小组和关键访谈，审查人权倡议的社会文化视角，找出采取预防战略的障碍和各方都能接受的潜在解决办法。(3)使用流行病学技术评估影响HRI风险的农场工人的正常做法。(4)提高对HRI的认识，将其作为对农场工人的可信的个人风险，并将项目结果转化为HRI预防战略。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Although the major environmental and personal risk factors for heat-related illness (HRI) are known and California regulations have been enacted to protect workers, deaths and significant numbers of HRI continue to occur, particularly in agriculture. There continue to be many uncertainties surrounding factors that place workers at risk for HRI and employers' ability to utilize risk reduction strategies for worker protection. Missing from occupational studies on factors contributing to HRI are considerations of the metabolic heat load from working in diverse agricultural environments, and the socio-cultural factors affecting the mostly immigrant workers' work practices/behaviors. Without thorough understanding of these aspects, effective strategies to reduce agricultural HRI are diminished. This multidisciplinary effort brings together investigators from medicine, epidemiology, public health, physiology, anthropology and community outreach/education who are uniquely positioned to address HRI in agricultural populations. Our goal is to obtain novel data on internal body temperature as it relates to crop type and geography, external heat and internal metabolic loading, including accounting for work type and personal factors. Our innovative approach will obtain critical information on knowledge, work practices and social-cultural issues that impact a worker's decisions with regard to HRI prevention. By combining these approaches, we aim to develop protective strategies to be translated and broadcast through outreach and education programs. The specific aims of this proposal are: (1) Increase understanding of the physiological responses to increased environmental heat and physical exertion among farmworkers through the analyses of personal characteristics, monitors and sensors, and use the protocols developed to generate and validate risk models. 2) Examine socio-cultural perspectives of HRI using focus groups and key interviews, and identify barriers to adoption of prevention strategies and potential solutions acceptable to all parties. (3) Assess normal practices of farmworkers that impact HRI risk using epidemiological techniques. (4) Increase awareness of HRI as a credible personal risk to farmworkers, and translate project findings into HRI prevention strategies.