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News Releases
Harvesting Knowledge:
Migrant Farmworkers and Arthritis
Columbia, Mo. (May 30, 2007) - While perusing the wide variety of fruits and vegetables at the grocery store, we rarely consider the individuals who make this possible-the migrant farmworker. Eighty-five percent of these fruits and vegetables are hand harvested and cultivated. This physically demanding labor places undue stress on the joints, often causing joint pain and even arthritis.
"These workers frequently bend, twist, turn, reach, lift heavy loads, and walk long distances over uneven ground during a workday," says Karen Funkenbusch, a research associate and rural safety and health specialist at the University of Missouri-Columbia. "And when their physically demanding day is over, the aches and pains they experience may not just be from a hard day's work, but also from arthritis."
Arthritis is one of the most common disabilities found in the nation's three million farmworkers. To help farmworkers prevent and cope with arthritis, the Missouri Arthritis Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (MARRTC) started an initiative that delivers arthritis-related information directly to farmers, ranchers and farmworkers.
"We are out in rural agricultural communities talking with farmers, ranchers, and farmworkers," says Funkenbusch. "They are the ones who need arthritis education and self-management strategies the most because of their labor-intensive occupations."
More than 4 out of 5 farmworkers are minorities, according to the National Center for Farmworker Health, Inc. For these individuals, language, culture, and educational barriers, as well as lack of insurance and access to health care, make them particularly vulnerable to the effects of arthritis.
So, MARRTC developed a culturally sensitive arthritis prevention and care program using Spanish-speaking lay-health educators, known as "promotoras," to help bridge the health care gap. These "promotoras" present easy to understand information in a way that is acceptable for Spanish-speaking farmworkers who might hold very different cultural beliefs about how arthritis should be treated.
Researchers at MARRTC then gathered together some of these farmworkers and "promotoras" in Texas and Missouri to learn what they knew about arthritis-the myths and facts, and also about their exercise habits and self-management care.
"In the past, migrant farmworkers didn't see arthritis as an urgent problem or concern. They treated their everyday aches and pains of arthritis as something they just had to live with as they got older," says Funkenbusch. "But now, farmworkers are saying, 'I don't have to live with so much pain from my arthritis!' and believe if they change their everyday work and living habits, they could have a better quality of life by better controlling their arthritis and other health problems."
For more information about this program - "Arthritis Prevention and Self-Management for Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers" - visit http://marrtc.missouri.edu/research/summaries.html#project4.
The Missouri Arthritis Research Rehabilitation and Training Center (MARRTC) was established in 1971 at the University of Missouri-Columbia Arthritis Center. MARRTC is funded by the U.S. Department of Education's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (H133B031120) and is the only federally funded arthritis rehabilitation research and training center in the country.
As part of the MU Health Communication Research Center (HCRC), MARRTC's mission is to become a national leader in the areas of disability management and communication, improve the quality of life and promote independent living among people who have arthritis and arthritic conditions. MARRTC's core message is "Disability is everyone's issue."
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