As students and longtime public health professionals visited their alma mater booths, snagged stickers and pens, and stopped at enticing nonprofit and federal agency booths, in another part of the Public Health Expo on Sunday dozens of science conversations were taking place.

It was poster session time (drum roll, please!), and the topics were as diverse as public health itself. Here is just a sample of public health research, outreach and advocacy featured at Sunday’s poster session. 

Breastfeeding challenges for food service employees

Amanda Joost, of the University of Toledo, showed the challenges of breastfeeding while working in food service.

More and more young women are working in low-wage jobs, particularly in the food service industry. Women in these positions who want to continue breastfeeding — and thus need to pump at work — are at an increased risk of psychosocial hazards in the workplace, Joost said. 

The researchers used the photovoice method to ask nine Northern Ohio mothers who pumped at their food service jobs to take photos. The photos were to capture aspects of the workplace design that affected how the women were able to pump breast milk. The team used the SHOWeD method to elicit captions from the women.

The photos “gave the mothers an opportunity to really highlight what it was about their experience. It said so much more than the words themselves,” Joost said.

Participants were ages 22-37; 78% were white and 11% Black. Most worked part time, with 67% earning less than $10-13/hour. 

“A lot of our mothers described it as being quite a stressful experience, and that was attributed to lack of formal policies, the lack of a dedicated space,” Joost said. 

While breastfeeding challenges are not unique to the food industry, the adaptations the women had to make were: Some used wearable pumps while waiting tables — if they stopped and asked someone to cover them, they would lose out on those tips. 

Some worked in food distribution and drove vehicles for work, “so having a pump that could really hold a charge was important for those mothers.” At least one of the women was told she could not keep the company truck running while pumping, so she couldn’t use the heat or air conditioning and couldn’t plug in her pump. 

The PUMP (Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers) Act was signed into law in 2022 to close some of the loopholes in the 2010 Break Time for Nursing Mothers law, according to the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee. The updated law requires employers — including those with fewer than 50 employees — to provide reasonable break time and a private, non-bathroom space for lactating employees.

However, Joost said, the laws largely missed women who work in non-standard arrangements, such as in food distribution. While it is important for companies to establish formal policies and provide a dedicated, private breastfeeding space, that’s just the basics, she said.

“Mothers spoke a lot about needing to lock the space in which they’re in and (being) interrupted and (having to) share the space they’re actively pumping in,” Joost said. 

Policies should also address the potential financial loss when women step away to pump, such as while waiting tables, she said. Other ideas include providing stipends for wearable pumps or pumps that keep a long charge and providing uniforms that hide a wearable pump and would make women feel comfortable. 

Health of Hispanic day laborers

A team at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston set out to examine the association between trust in information and self-rated health among Hispanic day laborers. Researchers recruited 300 day laborers from random sites in Houston in November and December 2021. Two measures of trust were developed: one on depression, anxiety and stress, and another on self-rated health. 

The study showed that the more the participants trusted formal sources of information, such as Spanish-speaking media, the lower they rated their own health, said poster presenter Jan Catindig. 

“One of our assumptions was that it was due to the negative tone of the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said. 

Greater levels of anxiety and depression were also associated with lower self-reported health. This showed that the association between formal trust and decreased self-reported health was not mediated by mental health, Catindig said. 

The team also found that trust in informal sources, such as family, friends and co-workers, was not significantly associated with self-reported or mental health.

Health care worker protections

In her poster, Rocelyn de Leon-Minch called for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration to improve the health and safety of health care workers, particularly nurses, by providing better workplace protections. De Leon-Minch is an industrial hygienist with National Nurses United, the largest labor union and professional association for registered nurses.

NNU surveys show that 82% of nurses have experienced at least one type of workplace violence within the past year, and 65% have sustained at least one infection at work. De Leon-Minch’s poster highlighted data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that showed the significant increases of nurse work-related injury and illness, while rates for overall workers remained steady.

Nurses have long experienced high rates of injuries and illnesses at work, but the numbers have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, de Leon-Minch said.

“Nurses bear the brunt of these injuries and illnesses, but not only that, workplace violence has been an epidemic in health care settings throughout the country, and since the pandemic, rates have really accelerated.”

California has the most comprehensive workplace violence prevention standard, by Cal/OHSA. NNU is calling for OSHA to include the same protections in a national standard. OHSA has no standard to specifically protect health care workers from workplace violence or infectious disease and injury. A standard — not just guidelines or recommendations — would require employers to establish workplace measures. Examples are risk assessments, proper ventilation and enough personal protective equipment for employees.   

“The last time OSHA issued a standard specific to health care was the bloodborne pathogen standard that was issued 30 years ago,” de Leon-Minch said.

The conditions health care workers are dealing with have contributed to the nursing staffing crisis, she said. One in three nurses are considering leaving the nursing profession, and 1 in 5 have left or changed their jobs, according to NNU surveys.

“To bring nurses back to the bedside, they need protections,” she said.

Check out the next poster sessions on Monday and Tuesday.

Jan Catindig, on the left, talks about her poster findings with Katerina Karaiskos. Photo courtesy Melanie Padgett Powers.