Seeing tea leaves harvested in India motivated Maya Ramaswamy to study what can be a physically demanding line of work, with low wages. Ramaswamy, a second-year Ph.D. student in the University of Iowa College of Public Health’s Occupational and Environmental Health program, will lead a project this summer to identify occupational demands and health outcomes among Indian tea workers.

“I’m interested in looking at vulnerable populations,” Ramaswamy said, noting that the workers are often similar to migrant workers in the United States, facing language barriers and other challenges. “The work is very difficult: picking leaves in the hot sun for 8 to 10 hours a day and carrying heavy loads.”

READ more about Maya Ramaswamy’s current trip to do research on a tea plantation in India…

She observed the harvest firsthand at a tea plantation in India. At the time, she was teaching at VIT University in India as an assistant professor at the Business School and Survey Research Center.

Originally from Rochester, N.Y., Ramaswamy has relatives in India and has spent time there on her family’s coconut farm. She earned both her bachelor of science degree, in industrial engineering, and master’s in engineering management from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Ramaswamy said she looked at several colleges before deciding on the UI, where she has a NIOSH traineeship at the Heartland Center for Occupational Health and Safety that provides for her tuition, along with a stipend.

Although she had no public health experience, Ramaswamy said the UI program provided a way to coalesce her wide range of interests, including public policy, sustainability, industrial engineering, and ergonomics, which is her area of emphasis. Ramaswamy’s mentors at the UI have been supportive of her goals, she said, noting that Dr. Nate Fethke, her faculty and research advisor, also has an engineering background.

“The skills I’m building I wouldn’t necessarily be able to acquire in a manufacturing environment,” she said, “so this is a really nice opportunity to work on my research skills in various settings in the U.S. and abroad.”

Under Fethke, Ramaswamy is working with a team conducting research on musculoskeletal disorders among farmers. She and other team members have traveled in Iowa and to several states to measure vibration on farm machinery and other exposures that can impact the health of farmers.

While her research studies take place in widely different settings, Ramaswamy said the challenges are similar in both countries, and what she is learning at the UI will transfer to a variety of situations. “I can apply the skills that I build here to other areas,” she said. “Understanding the exposures and hazards and trying to prevent them is the goal.”

— Story by Cindy Hadish