Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing Research at NIOSH Reviews of Research Programs of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (2008) / Chapter Skim
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9 Other Programmatic Elements Identified by the Committee
9 Other Programmatic Elements Identified by the Committee
Pages 140-157
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From page 140... ...
STAKEHOLDERS The AFF Program seeks to engage stakeholders in its work, and the challenges in engaging such a large and diverse workforce are obviously great. Other National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
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From page 141... ...
Engaging Hired Farm Laborers In 1988, the Ford Foundation challenged the California Institute for Rural Studies (CIRS) to undertake research in the subject of farm labor and rural poverty in California.
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From page 142... ...
For the 60-odd farm labor representatives or rural community leaders, who included industry representatives, the choice of Fresno made sense from the beginning. Next, the conference discussion process involved carefully choosing eight aca demics to prepare research papers on specific topics: housing, voting rights, labor relations, the California farm labor market, measuring rural poverty, indigenous migrants, the changing structure of agriculture, and pesticide policy.
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From page 143... ...
In 1998, organic growers in central North Dakota requested a meeting with scientists of the National Farm Medicine Center (NFMC) so that they could explore concerns about personal health and about potential contamination of their organic farm products resulting from the use of pesticides on adjacent acreage that had been purchased or rented by potato growers of the Red River Valley in the North.
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From page 144... ...
As data collection proceeded, technical staff were invited to provide study updates and transmit educational information about the study, pesticide products used on potato crops and their potential human health effects, types and hydrological characteristics of soil overlying aquifers in central North Dakota, and the use of personal protective equipment. NFMC scientists and technical staff invested ad ditional effort to educate potato growers about preventing nontarget exposure, applying pesticide with "best management practices", and planning for the future use of integrated pest management strategies.
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From page 145... ...
Engaging Alaska Commercial Fishermen The fourth example, from commercial fishing, can be found in the work leading to the publication and distribution of the booklet Deck Safety for Crab Fishermen (Jensen Maritime Consultants, 2002) , a publication that is in its third printing since its release in 2002.
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From page 146... ...
The fishing program in Alaska has been particularly effective in directly involving various cat egories of workers in addressing occupational safety in a localized fishery industry; however, some categories of workers may have been underrepresented. Organizations representing self-employed and unpaid family workers in agri culture are relatively highly developed, especially nowadays with the proliferation of commodity-based groups; there is relatively effective involvement of some of these groups in the AFF Program, as was clear at the Seattle National Occupational R esearch Agenda (NORA)
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From page 147... ...
At times, the training has been specific to clinical problems that are directly relevant to AFF workforce safety and health issues and has been conducted with a public health approach; however, at other times, it has been a general approach to occupational safety and health without emphasis on problems seen in AFF workers. There has been a consistent approach to educating healthcare professionals about AFF occupational issues.
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From page 148... ...
NIOSH describes the emphasis as follows: "The core areas of programming are industrial hygiene, occupational health nursing, occupational medicine, and occupational safety. Programs are developed to meet the educational needs of these groups as well as other professionals working in the field of occu pational safety and health" (ERC, 2007)
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From page 149... ...
Participants receive occupational health screenings, health and wellness education, on-farm safety reviews, and incentives for adopting safer farming processes. Willing farmers work with a nurse trained in farm safety and health and a person trained in inspecting farms for safety hazards.
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From page 150... ...
Northwest Community Health Worker Network Extramural AFF Program re searchers engaged the Hispanic farmworker community through two community based participatory research projects in Washington and Idaho. Together with the Washington Association of Community and Migrant Health Centers, researchers established the Northwest Community Health Worker Network and listserv, and they provided professional education to clinicians and trained community health workers in prevention and diagnosis of and treatment for pesticide poisoning.
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From page 151... ...
Forestry Before formal implementation of the AFF Program in 1990 but concurrently with congressional adoption of appropriations legislation establishing the program in NIOSH, NIOSH provided National Traumatic Occupational Fatality Surveillance System data to support development of an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) forestry standard.
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From page 152... ...
And the projects have enhanced the professional development of classically trained agricultural engineers, industrial hygienists, safety professionals, industrial nurses, and so on whose career trajectories evolved from full-time employment in sector-related industry to university-based Ag Centers, occupational health clinics, and other private venues, such as the National Safety Council. Examples of these outcomes include the following: • The Certified Safe Farms project has received funding from the health insurance industry in Iowa.
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From page 153... ...
The two most notable partnerships have been with the Alaska commercial fishing industry, where NIOSH engaged the industry workforce directly, and with the Childhood Agricultural Safety Network, where a brilliant example of coalition building was successfully undertaken and realized over a period of years. The AFF Program has conducted 16 investigations as part of the agency-wide Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE)
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From page 154... ...
First, as the NIOSH evidence package notes, the AFF workforce is to a great degree unregulated. The various stat utory exemptions from the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act, noted in Appendix F, severely limit the purview of NIOSH research activities; OSHA, for example, excludes all farms with 10 or fewer employees.
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From page 155... ...
Private foundations, non-government organizations, industry trade groups, and others can join state agencies in undertaking initiatives to address workplace safety and health in the AFF sector, and there are numerous examples of the support of research activities by the private sector. PROGRAM EVALUATION INITIATIVES NIOSH established an Operational Logic Model with the mission "To provide national and world leadership to prevent work-related illness and injuries." As part of this model, the goal of the AFF Program is prevention through effective research, transfer, and evaluation.
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From page 156... ...
The NIOSH Operational Logic Model described in the evidence package indi cates that evaluation would occur during most of the steps of the model (Figure 1-3 on page 28 of NIOSH, 2006a)
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From page 157... ...
However, the evidence package, while providing significant evidence regarding programs in place, did not document an evaluation process that could provide evidence of the overall effectiveness of the AFF Program. There is some evidence that program evaluations are conducted, but validation of program effectiveness in reducing injuries and illnesses is not robust and needs substantial improvement.
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