UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Hazel Velasco Palacios, a doctoral candidate in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, has been awarded a writing fellowship to help support her research on health care access for Pennsylvania farmworkers in the mushroom and dairy industries.
The fellowship was awarded by the Center for Engaged Scholarship, an organization created with the goal of helping the U.S. be a more democratic, egalitarian and environmentally sustainable society.
Velasco Palacios said her long-term goal is to work at the intersection of research, policy and community advocacy, and that she hopes to continue producing public-facing scholarship that supports immigrant communities and advances change in agricultural labor and rural health.
“The fellowship will help provide the time and support needed to complete my dissertation and strengthen its policy relevance,” she said. “It will also connect me with a national network of scholars committed to engaged research, something I deeply value and strive to contribute to throughout my career.”
Kathleen Sexsmith, assistant professor of rural sociology, said being a recipient of the highly competitive fellowship is a testament to the excellence of Velasco Palacios’ work.
“Hazel’s research uncovers the significant challenges that immigrant farmworkers and their families face when seeking medical care, an especially urgent concern considering the significant occupational safety and health risks on dairy and mushroom farms. Her immersive and embedded approach to research has allowed her to collect more than 100 interviews with farmworkers and stakeholders, and this rigor makes her an influential voice in the field.”
Velasco Palacios, who is pursuing a dual-title degree in rural sociology and in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, said her research explored how Latina/o farmworker families in Pennsylvania — particularly those working in the mushroom and dairy industries — navigate structural and symbolic barriers to health care access.
Through in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, she examines how immigration status, labor conditions, gender roles and rural infrastructure shape the health and wellbeing of these families.
“One of my goals is to document how farmworker families — especially women — develop mutual aid networks, rely on transnational care strategies and negotiate fragmented health systems in the absence of formal support,” Velasco Palacios said. “My research centers the voices of migrant communities and aims to inform more equitable labor, health and immigration policies.”
Velasco Palacios’ research has been published in the Journal of Rural Health, the journal Rural Sociology and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her doctoral research also has been supported by the American Sociological Association’s Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants program, the National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety, and the College of Agricultural Sciences Graduate Student Competitive Grant Program.