The Binational Health Survey: An In-depth Study of Agricultural Worker Health in Mexico and the United States
Author: Mines, Rick; Mullenax, Nancy Ph.D.
Date Published: 2001
The study of farmworker health detailed in this report provides new and vital information on how immigrant agricultural workers in the United States cope with the many health-care challenges they face. This 18-month pilot study--called the Binational Health Survey (BHS)--focused on families from among ten immigrant networks tied to the state of Zacatecas in northwestern Mexico. Relying on both a quantitative survey instrument and extensive field observations among farmworkers and health-care professionals in Mexico and the United States, the investigation offers key insights about institutional and social factors that affect farmworker health and outlines strategies for resolving these difficult issues. The findings are particularly illuminating with respect to how U.S. health-care delivery and insurance systems create complex obstacles that impede access to needed treatments. These difficulties are exacerbated by the fact that farmworker's understanding of health and their culturally defined treatment expectations are very different from the practices and procedures they encounter in the United States. As rural Mexican attitudes about medicine play out within the bureaucratic and time-consumptive U.S. health-care system, the result often leads to random and unsupervised choices that, at a minimum, should be administered by a qualified health care professional.
Date Published: 2001
The study of farmworker health detailed in this report provides new and vital information on how immigrant agricultural workers in the United States cope with the many health-care challenges they face. This 18-month pilot study--called the Binational Health Survey (BHS)--focused on families from among ten immigrant networks tied to the state of Zacatecas in northwestern Mexico. Relying on both a quantitative survey instrument and extensive field observations among farmworkers and health-care professionals in Mexico and the United States, the investigation offers key insights about institutional and social factors that affect farmworker health and outlines strategies for resolving these difficult issues. The findings are particularly illuminating with respect to how U.S. health-care delivery and insurance systems create complex obstacles that impede access to needed treatments. These difficulties are exacerbated by the fact that farmworker's understanding of health and their culturally defined treatment expectations are very different from the practices and procedures they encounter in the United States. As rural Mexican attitudes about medicine play out within the bureaucratic and time-consumptive U.S. health-care system, the result often leads to random and unsupervised choices that, at a minimum, should be administered by a qualified health care professional.
