DIVERSIFIED PARTNERSHIPS: BUILDING IPM PROGRAMMING WITHIN LATINO COMMUNITIES

Urban pests and pesticide use can pose serious risks to human health and the environment. Various pests may damage property, cause fires, spread disease, bite, sting, and trigger asthma. Pesticides used as the first line of defense to combat these pests are often misused, overused and used indoors repeatedly, leading to poor indoor air quality and exposures to toxins and lung irritants. IPM (Integrated Pest Management) is a more effective and safer approach to pest management that teaches proper identification of pests, the conditions that allow pests and how to prevent and/or eliminate them effectively while reducing exposures to toxins. Minority populations bear a disproportionate burden of negative health effects due to environmental hazards, including exposures to pests and pesticides. Hispanics are the largest minority in the county with 16% (50.5 million) of the total U.S. population and growing. Twenty-one percent of Hispanics live below the poverty level and disproportionately inhabit sub-standard housing where pest problems and asthma are chronic. Thus, Hispanics have a great unmet need for accessible IPM information, education and resources at the individual, organizational and community level. Although there are some written materials and videos in Spanish on pesticide safety for agricultural workers, these workers comprise only a very small proportion of all Latino workers or households, with only 3.7% of all employed Hispanics 16-24 years old working in agriculture and related industries. In the 10.5 million US Hispanic households, pesticide use is likely similar to the country as a whole with an average of 6 products on hand, used as the first, and sometimes only, line of defense against pests. Additionally, use of illegal pesticides is common in urban Latino communities. People do not even know about Poison Control emergency contacts, much less IPM. Our project will work in partnership with Latino organizations to produce and deliver educational materials on IPM in Spanish (brochures, radio spots, newspaper articles, video) and workshops and training in Spanish. The project will use the power of partnerships with Latino organizations to access the community and assure that bilingual educational products developed reach the target audience and are effective.