The pandemic made our nation aware of the importance of the people who raise, pick, and process our food. We now understand that farmworkers, as well as grocery store cashiers and shelf stockers can be counted among our country’s Essential Workers. However, it’s not always clear to the Community Health Center care team what a patient’s occupation is. Occupation is one of the most important social drivers of health, affecting patients’ health and access to healthcare in many different ways. This episode of Health Centers on the Front Lines takes us behind the scenes at a health center and their partner network as they change the culture around disclosure of occupation among patients. Our guests talk about what it takes to collect data about a patient’s occupation and why it improves care when the care team knows what work their patients do.


Featured in the Episode

Katherine Chung-Bridges, MD
Director of Research at Health Choice Network
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-chung-bridges-8a0127170/

Daniel Parras
Research Data Scientist
Health Choice Network
Website: https://www.hcnetwork.org/

Yvonne Armijo
Director of Operations/Information System Analyst
La Casa Family Health Center
Website: https://www.lacasahealth.com/

Giddel Thom, MD
Chief Medical Director
La Casa Family Health Center
Website: https://www.lacasahealth.com/

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:56 The story of dairy farm workers
07:49 What is occupational data and how does it affect health care?
10:18 The difficulty of collecting these data
12:19 The challenge of integrating occupational data into the E-health records
15:44 The importance of occupation in health and in socioeconomics
20:00 Reactions when meeting new patients having to know their past medical records
24:03 Takeaways from our guests

Produced by Heartcast Media
https://www.heartcastmedia.com/