Date of News Release: Wednesday, October 11, 2006

An estimated 8,000 migrant and seasonal farmworkers return to Washington County, Maine each year to participate in an intense three to four week blueberry harvest. Harvesting wild blueberries, like numerous other commodities, requires stooped labor, often causing severe muscle strain. As one raker described, “If you’ve raked before, you’d know that it’s not just your back that hurts, but your whole body. It’s all connected.”

Muscle strain and pain is universal among rakers effecting not only their physical well being but also their livelihood. For this reason employers and rakers have formed a regional team with support from Maine Migrant Health Program and NYCAMH. This group has worked together over the last three years in an effort to reduce this chronic condition.

During this time the regional team worked to develop an intervention, and to oversee the development process and resulting evaluation. Outcomes from their ongoing efforts include increased community awareness of occupational hazards, and acknowledgement that these conditions are related to work and modifiable.

Next steps for the project include evaluating results from the 2006 intervention and distributing the results to the local farming community. In addition, team members will serve as consultants for a new project, which aims to use a similar intervention development approach for occupational injuries in Connecticut. This will later be expanded to encompass other interested farming communities.