TYPE Opinion PUBLISHED 07 November 2022 DOI 10.3389/fpubh.2022.1046701 OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Bryan Weichelt, Marshfield Clinic Research Institute, United States REVIEWED BY Joel Henrique Ellwanger, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil *CORRESPONDENCE Marysel Pagán-Santana mpagan@migrantclinician.org SPECIALTY SECTION This article was submitted to Children and Health, a section of the journal Frontiers in Public Health RECEIVED 16 September 2022 ACCEPTED 19 October 2022 PUBLISHED 07 November 2022 CITATION Pagán-Santana M, Liebman AK and López-Correa AY (2022) Looking at the gaps and program needs to address the impact on children of agricultural workers in Puerto Rico during and after public health emergencies. Front. Public Health 10:1046701. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.1046701 COPYRIGHT © 2022 Pagán-Santana, Liebman and López-Correa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Looking at the gaps and program needs to address the impact on children of agricultural workers in Puerto Rico during and after public health emergencies Marysel Pagán-Santana 1 *, Amy K. Liebman 2 and Aníbal Y. López-Correa 1 1 Migrant Clinicians Network, Puerto Rico Office, San Juan, PR, United States, 2 Migrant Clinicians Network, Environmental and Occupational Health, Salisbury, MD, United States KEYWORDS Puerto Rico, farmworkers, children, climate, emergencies Introduction Hurricanes Irma and Maria in the Caribbean, wildfires in the western United States, flooding in parts of Pakistan, and extreme heat waves in Europe are examples of recent natural disasters that became public health emergencies. The consequences of these events, including access to essential services and damage and destruction of infrastructure, create a cascading impact, affecting the immediate and long-term health and well-being of the population. Intense climate-related events are projected to increase in intensity and impact (1). However, these do not affect everyone equally and vary depending on the characteristics of individuals, their work, ethnicity, residence, and language, among others (2, 3). Moreover, the social, economic, and political systems in which these events occur can function as either increase risk or foster protection. In the case of agricultural workers, they are subject to various environmental stressors throughout their workday and experience greater risks than workers in most other industries (4). They are in a more vulnerable position regarding the effects that climate change may have on their work. Moreover, other psychosocial factors intrinsic to farming, such as social and working conditions, made agricultural workers one of the most affected populations during the COVID-19 pandemic (5). The physical effects that extreme events can have on the health of agricultural workers, and the damage and social effects of public health emergencies related to the climate crisis can also impact their children, especially those who are also part of the agricultural labor force. For minors who participate in agricultural work, the effect of disasters adds to the damage and general impact of high-risk exposures and lack of labor protection that are already of concern because of the effect on their health and development. Frontiers in Public Health 01 frontiersin.org