Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative

There are an estimated 117,000 Latino migrant day laborers in the U.S., with about a third residing in California. Migrant day laborers typically perform physically demanding and dangerous work, with little-to-no access to health care or workers' protections. BIMI-affiliate Dr. Kurt Organista (UC Berkeley) and his co-authors Samantha Ngo, Dr. Torsten Neilands (UC San Francisco), and Dr. Alex H. Kral (UC San Francisco) explore how the living conditions experienced by Latino migrant day laborers in the San Francisco Bay Area affect their physical health, their mental health, and their chances of contracting infectious diseases. Their research exposes a public health crisis afflicting a large yet underserved population, and provides evidence-backed recommendations for therapeutic treatments and policy-based cures that could alleviate this public health concern. Read the original research article here.