From MercuryNews.com, “Award Recognizes Effort to Help Injured Workers: Health Project Spearheaded by Watsonville Law Center’s Dori Rose Inda” by Donna Jones – Santa Cruz Sentinel, 28 Feb 2011.
WATSONVILLE [California] – Anyone hurt on the job suffers, but for many of California’s lowest-wage earners, work-related injuries can be particularly painful.
For them, accessing medical care within the workers compensation system can prove challenging, leading workers to ignore their injuries or creating out-of-pocket expenses they can ill afford.
Watsonville Law Center Executive Director Dori Rose Inda will be accepting an award on behalf of her organization this week for establishing a workers compensation program for farmworkers. (Shmuel Thaler/Sentinel)
Dori Rose Inda, executive director of the nonprofit Watsonville Law Center, set out to work on the problem eight years ago. Since then, the Agricultural Workers Access to Health Project has worked with numerous public and private agencies to develop model programs for overcoming barriers to treatment, such as noncompliant employers and language.
Thursday, Inda will travel to Sacramento to pick up a $125,000 James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award for her work. The cash prize will go toward promoting and expanding the programs.
“We’ll be able to spread the word,” Inda said. “This has the potential to have great impact.”
The Watsonville Law Center and partners Salud Para La Gente and California Rural Legal Assistance in Salinas founded an outreach and education program, established legal clinics with the help of the California Applicants’ Attorneys Association, and developed systems that allowed Salud to accept workers compensation cases.
A pilot project with the Workers Compensation Appeals Board Information and Assistance Office in Salinas has helped speed claims of workers whose employers haven’t complied with the state insurance law.
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