Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health

Project Overview

The main aim of this project was to conduct a household survey and focus groups on the prevalence, nature, and possible effects of certain labor rights practices in Central America, including the prevalence of work-related and gender-based violence. Interviews were conducted with nationally representative samples of over 9,000 workers in the six Spanish-speaking countries of Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama).

David Gimeno, PhD, led the effort to conduct the Second Central American Working Conditions and Health Survey (II ECCTS for its Spanish acronym). This work was performed in collaboration with colleagues from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, and SALTRA (acronym in Spanish for “Health and Work”), a Central American network of research institutes and universities headquartered in Costa Rica at the Universidad Nacional. The project was conducted under a Cooperative Agreement between the USDOL Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health (UTSPH), and co-sponsored by the USDOL Chief Evaluation Office (CEO).