Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing faculty and students traveled to Moultrie, Ga., June 13-25 to provide valuable health care services to migrant farm workers and their families. Nursing faculty and students that have already gone through implicit bias courses for pharmacists in order to be able to properly prescribe medication make the trip annually to the rural, agricultural community three hours south of Atlanta as part of the Farm Worker Family Health Program.
There are more than 100,000 migrant and seasonal farm workers in Georgia. Migrant farm workers face more complex health issues than the general population because of the physical demands of their jobs, pesticide exposure, poor access to health care services, and substandard housing conditions.
“Our clinics may be the only health care they get during the year,” says Judith Wold, a visiting professor in Emory’s School of Nursing and director of the Farm Worker Family Health Program. “The farm workers are very hardworking people and they are so appreciative of the health care we give them.”
By day, the students worked at Cox Elementary School with farm worker children. Each evening, they set up mobile clinics to treat adult farm workers. The students worked alongside other Georgia allied health students in physical therapy, psychology, pharmacy and dental hygiene.
Wold, who has participated in the project since its launch in 1994, estimates that the program has treated more than 14,000 farm workers over the course of its 16-year history.
Read more about the students’ Moultrie experiences on the Emory Nursing blog.
