The Con­fer­ence for Agri­cul­tural Worker Health is the only con­fer­ence ded­i­cated solely to the health and well-being of America’s migra­tory and sea­sonal agri­cul­tural work­ers. Com­mu­nity and Migrant Heath Cen­ters cur­rently serve approx­i­mately 900,000 migra­tory and sea­sonal agri­cul­tural work­ers and their fam­i­lies. How­ever, this rep­re­sents less than 25% of the esti­mated num­ber who reside in the coun­try. We must do bet­ter, we can and we are!

The National Asso­ci­a­tion of Com­mu­nity Health Cen­ters in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the National Cen­ter for Farm­worker Health, Com­mu­nity and Migrant Health Cen­ters, State and Regional Pri­mary Care Asso­ci­a­tions, the Farm­worker Health Net­work and other key stake­hold­ers have launched Ag Worker Access 2020 Cam­paign!  The cam­paign has called on all migrant health cen­ters nation­wide to increase the num­ber of new farm­worker patients by 15% each year for the next five years.  If suc­cess­ful, we will reach 2 mil­lion patients by the year 2020!

S/RPCAs, health cen­ter net­works and health cen­ters all across the coun­try have enthu­si­as­ti­cally embraced the cam­paign by devel­op­ing more spe­cific com­mu­nity out­reach strate­gies and effec­tive uti­liza­tion of com­mu­nity health work­ers and promotoras(es) to reach the pop­u­la­tion. Train-the-Trainer pro­gram cur­ric­ula has been devel­oped by NCFH and front desk staff are being trained to more accu­rately iden­tify who is a “migra­tory” or “sea­sonal” agri­cul­tural worker and fam­ily mem­ber dur­ing the patient intake process result­ing in more accu­rate report­ing in the UDS report­ing sys­tem.
Come and join us in Savan­nah, Geor­gia May 22–24, 2017 to learn more about the cam­paign, what progress has been made, share effec­tive strate­gies designed to reach this pop­u­la­tion and net­work with your col­leagues who have ded­i­cated their lives to serv­ing America’s migra­tory and sea­sonal agri­cul­tural pop­u­la­tion.

With increased atten­dance last year, the 2017 Con­fer­ence for Agri­cul­tural Worker Health will be even better—focusing on inno­va­tion, health cen­ter oper­a­tional excel­lence, efforts to extend health insur­ance cov­er­age to those left out of the ACA, and more.