Associated organisationsAlexandria University · London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine · St George's, University of London · University of MalayaEurope PMC affiliations are not treated as award recipients or mapped locations.
Funding£1.3M
PeriodFeb 2026 — Jan 2029
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
Low-wage migrant workers in Egypt, Malaysia, and the UK will help design their own health surveys and workplace protections under a new research programme. These workers—the world’s largest migrant group—face high injury rates, elevated illness and death, yet remain invisible in national health data and absent from surveillance systems. The problem is worsening as social, technological, and climate pressures accelerate. Current health interventions rarely account for their precarious employment terms or healthcare exclusion. This consortium will co-develop standardised, validated measures of labour conditions and worker health, then use them to generate national and global burden estimates. They will also co-design scalable interventions such as mobile clinics, migrant insurance schemes, and climate-adaptive heat protection protocols. If successful, the work could transform how governments and UN agencies track and protect migrant worker health—shifting them from an overlooked population to one whose needs are routinely measured and addressed. The project builds on existing collaborations with UN agencies and migrant worker networks, ensuring the tools are worker-centred and replicable across different countries.
View original technical description
The health impact of hazardous work conditions, precarious employment terms and healthcare exclusion on low-wage migrant workers—the world’s largest migrant group—remains severely under-researched. Our Consortium’s work indicates the disproportionate risks faced by migrant workers, including high workplace injury rates, and elevated morbidity and mortality. The global burden of these conditions worsens health inequalities, particularly as social, technological, economic, environmental, and political (STEEP) transitions accelerate. Yet, migrant workers remain invisible in health metrics, absent from surveillance systems, and overlooked in health interventions. Addressing this systematic neglect is crucial for equitable and inclusive health protections. Building on long-standing collaborations with interdisciplinary academics, UN agencies, and migrant worker networks, we will pioneer advanced methodologies and migrant-sensitive survey instruments to generate national and global burden estimates of migrant worker health and support scalable, worker-centred health interventions in Egypt, Malaysia, and the UK, alongside building research capacity. We will develop: 1.Migrant- inclusive health measurement strategies: Co-develop, with migrant workers, standardised, validated measures to assess labour conditions and worker health and generate evidence pathways to guide policy and programming. 2.Scalable, replicable health interventions: Co-design interventions to enhance healthcare access and use, including mobile clinics, migrant insurance schemes, and climate-adaptive heat protection protocols.
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