Using community-based prevention marketing to improve farm worker safety

Community-based prevention marketing (CBPM) combines a powerful planning framework, social marketing, with community organization principles to design behavior change programs. In southwest Florida, a coalition comprised of citrus workers and their employers, health providers, and academic researchers is using CBPM to identify occupational health issues among agricultural laborers, conduct community-based participatory research, and design culturally appropriate interventions. This article describes how this coalition was able to apply CBPM successfully to develop and implement an occupational safety program to prevent eye injuries among migrant farm workers. Lessons learned from this project and implications for designing and disseminating occupational safety programs for other agricultural workers are discussed.