Recognizing careworkers’ contributions to improving the social determinants of health: A call for supporting healthy carework

Workers engaged in reproductive labor—the caring work that maintains society and supports its growth—contribute to societal health while also enduring the harms of precarious labor and substantial work stress. How can we conceptualize the effects of reproductive labor on workers and society simultaneously? In this commentary, we analyze four types of more relational and less relational careworkers—homeless shelter workers, school food workers, home care aides, and household cleaners—during the COVID-19 pandemic. We then make a case for a new model of societal health that recognizes the contributions of careworkers and healthy carework. Our model includes multi-sectoral social policies supporting both worker health and societal health and acknowledges several dimensions of work stress for careworkers that have received insufficient attention. Ultimately, we argue that the effects of reproductive labor on workers and society must be considered jointly, a recognition that offers an urgent vision for repairing and advancing societal health.

Antimicrobial Resistance in Salmonella Isolated from Food Workers and Chicken Products in Japan

Salmonella is an enteric bacterial pathogen that causes foodborne illness in humans. Third-generation cephalosporin (TGC) resistance in Salmonella remains a global concern. Food workers may represent a reservoir of Salmonella, thus potentially contaminating food products. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of Salmonella in food workers and characterize the isolates by serotyping and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. Salmonella was isolated from 583 (0.079%) of 740,635 stool samples collected from food workers between January and December 2018, and then serotyped into 76 Salmonella enterica serovars and 22 untypeable Salmonella strains. High rates of antimicrobial resistance were observed for streptomycin (51.1%), tetracycline (33.1%), and kanamycin (18.4%). Although isolates were susceptible to ciprofloxacin, 12 (2.1%) strains (one S. Infantis, one S. Manhattan, two S. Bareilly, two S. Blockley, two S. Heidelberg, two S. Minnesota, one S. Goldcoast, and one untypeable Salmonella strain) were resistant to the TGC cefotaxime, all of which harbored β-lactamase genes (blaCMY-2, blaCTX-M-15, blaCTX-M-55, and blaTEM-52B). Moreover, 1.3% (4/309) of Salmonella strains (three S. Infantis and one S. Manhattan strains) isolated from chicken products were resistant to cefotaxime and harbored blaCMY-2 or blaTEM-52B. Thus, food workers may acquire TGC-resistant Salmonella after the ingestion of contaminated chicken products and further contaminate food products.

Food

In recent decades, a growing portion of the world’s population has adopted a diet in which increasing calories come from foods high in fat, sugar, and salt that is highly processed by industrial food companies. These ultra-processed products have become the primary determinants of the rising burden of diet-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, now the world’s leading killers. This chapter shows how food retailers, restaurant and fast food chains, food manufacturers, and agricultural producers have changed in response to changes in capitalism to make the ultra-processed diet the global norm. The agricultural production for these products is also a leading cause of climate change. The chapter further describes an emerging yet uncoordinated popular response that includes farmers and food workers, consumer cooperatives, local governments, and food justice activists that are seeking alternatives strategies for making healthy food affordable to all.

COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance among Cold-Chain Food Workers in China: A Cross-Sectional Survey (Preprint)

BACKGROUND As cold-chain transportation in frozen food may lead to localized outbreaks of COVID-19 in destinations. Given the high level of exposure to SARS-CoV-2, the cold-chain food workers are considered priority vaccination groups. To date, a number of studies have reported the willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19 within distinct populations, whereas it has not been reported among cold-chain food workers worldwide. OBJECTIVE We aim to investigate the willingness for COVID-19 vaccination and its influencing factors within cold-chain food workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS An online cross-sectional, population-based survey was employed to gather information regarding the willingness of COVID-19 vaccination and the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) associated with COVID-19 and vaccination among cold-chain food workers in Shenzhen City of China. Binomial logistic analyses were conducted to qualify the associations between COVID-19-related KAP factors and the willingness of COVID-19 vaccination using adjusted odds ratios (aORs) and 95% confidence interval (CI). RESULTS A total of 244 cold-chain food workers were recruited. Overall, 76.2% of the subjects indicated that they were willing to be vaccinated. After adjustment for general characteristics, knowledge on COVID-19 conception (aOR 2.313, 95%CI 1.098-4.872), comprehending the most effective measure (aOR 2.399, 95%CI 1.233-4.666), understanding the transmission routes (aOR 8.760, 95%CI 2.406-31.890), and recognizing the priority vaccination groups (aOR 2.587, 95%CI 1.331-5.029) were positively associated with the dependent variable. Regarding attitude factors, perceiving the social harmfulness (aOR 2.643, 95%CI 1.178-5.927) and severity of COVID-19 (aOR 3.109, 95%CI 1.116-8.660) were related to a higher willingness to get vaccinated. In terms of practice factors, participants who have attained more knowledge (aOR 2.608, 95%CI 1.115-6.099) were more likely to be vaccinated, and higher self-reported compliance with maintaining indoor ventilation (aOR 2.371, 95%CI 1.049-5.363) was also positively associated with the dependent variable. Agreement on the importance of vaccination to prevent COVID-19 was the most frequent reason for accepting the COVID-19 vaccine; additionally, concerns about side effects and poor understanding of efficacy were the main factors contributing to the vaccination refusal. CONCLUSIONS Enhancing KAP levels related to COVID-19 might be the key to promote vaccine acceptance. Health authorities ought to promptly implement educational activities following the updated vaccine situations.

Food safety knowledge levels of gastronomy/culinary arts students and food workers in Southern Turkey

This research was aimed to analyze the food safety knowledge levels between gastronomy and culinary arts students and food work-ers in the Çukurova Region of Turkey. A total of 155 participants (80 students, 75 food workers) have partici-pated in this cross-sectional study. The overall knowledge scores of food workers and the students were 89.33% and 78.89% respectively, and food workers have more scores in all sections (p<0.001). Hy-giene certification, occupa-tion, and working estab-lishments had a significant association with total food safety scores; however, gender, marital status, age, education level, frequency of hygiene education, work-ing experience, monthly in-come had no significant as-sociation with their scores (p>0.05). A positive correla-tion was found between gender, education status, hygiene certification, and frequency of receiving hy-giene education; but no cor-relation was found between working in any food busi-ness, graduated high schools, and age of the stu-dents (p>0.05). More knowledge gaps of both groups have been found about time-temperature con-trol, holding/storage tem-perature, and cross-contamination. Finally, it is important to measure the reflection of the hygiene training on practices and to make it regular in ensuring food safety.

The Role of Supervisors in the Hygiene Practice Compliance of the Food Sector Workers

Food hygiene is indisputably one of the most important issues in terms of public health and safety. Food workers are the leading staff members for the compliance of the basic hygiene rules. COVID-19 pandemic has attracted more attention especially for the exported goods from the higher case countries. Even though there is no evidence about the food contamination and COVID-19 risk, according to the European Food Safety Authority, food hygiene practices are important to avoid any contamination risks. Managers are known to have a significant influence on the behavior of their subordinates. In the relevant literature, it is stated that “interactional justice”, which is called the behavior of managers concerning their subordinates and providing adequate information and explanation about the decisions taken, is the most important indicator of the performance and efficiency of subordinates. From this point on, it is thought that interactional justice will affect the behavior of food workers to comply with the hygiene rules. In this research, employees' perceptions of interactional justice are planned to be measured using the informational and interpersonal justice subscales of the organizational justice scale. The tendencies to comply with the hygiene rules will be measured by asking the requirements of the HACCP food security system. At the end of this study, we expect to reach the processing operation involved workers of the investigated food companies.