UAW Hazardous Material Worker Health and Safety Training (U45)

Project Summary/Abstract The UAW proposes to work with local organizations in high COVID-19 impacted communities to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate education about COVID-19 health risks and protective measures. We will connect community members to needed public health resources such as COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, infection control, medical care and mental health services. The UAW will leverage its relationships with employers in government, community service organizations, manufacturing and gaming to help communities connect to resources such as testing, contact tracing, and effective infection control measures. The UAW and our partners have already developed COVID-19 curricula that use adult learning methods and popular education techniques. These curricula have integrated and expanded upon NIEHS COVID-19 resources and curricula. They are taught in Spanish as well as English and they have been integrated into English as a second language curricula. Over the course of the last two years these materials have been updated to reflect guidance from the CDC, NIOSH, NIH and other federal agencies. These materials can and will be adapted to account for state and local policies and regulations in the two Michigan counties, New York City and Puerto Rico that are relevant to the target training populations. The overall goal of this project is to move communities in Wayne and Oakland counties in Michigan, Puerto Rico and New York City, NY towards a recovery phase in the pandemic in which appropriate public health practices are more widely spread. The specific aims include: 1. Provide community members with culturally and linguistically appropriate education about COVID-19 health risks and protective infection control measures through the delivery of training classes, in-person or online, as appropriate. 2. Connect community members to needed public health resources such as COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, medical care, and mental health services through information provided in training and in informational fact sheets. 3. Using the ongoing pandemic as a model, the UAW will train our community partners in disaster preparedness, response and recovery and transfer knowledge of local disaster preparedness, response, and recovery resources. U-M will refine existing evaluation methods and instruments developed under the parent grant. This will require a Spanish-fluent evaluator trained in public health. Quality assurance will include observation of training and written surveys. Feedback from findings will be provided to trainers. Impact evaluation will assess whether participants were able to access high quality PPE and whether they knew whom to contact for additional information, access to COVID tests, vaccines, boosters, mental health counseling and other community resources.