Journal of Agromedicine最新文献

Land grant universities in the Northeast (e.g. Delaware, Maryland, New York) have seen changes in their faculty or Extension level positions: Agricultural safety specialist positions have been left vacant or have been merged with another position with other responsibilities, which reduces the amount of time available to address safety. In response to the resulting support gap, Penn State Ag Safety and Health and the Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety (NEC) launched the Northeast Agricultural Safety and Health Coalition (NEASHC) in 2014. NEASHC provides extension staff and other individuals interested in safety trainings (e.g. insurers, Farm Bureau staff) with opportunities to network and learn about best practices in agricultural health and safety training. Recognizing the importance of NEASHC's role in filling this service gap in the Northeast, the NEC included support for NEASHC in its last 5-year grant cycle (2016-2022) and has continued its support for the Coalition in their current five-year center grant (2022-2027). The NEC center grant is funded by National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) Grant #2 U54OH007542. NEASHC is an important component of the NEC's unified approach to worker health and safety, which is based in part on G. Sorensen's conceptual model for integrated approaches to the protection and promotion of worker safety.¹ The goals for NEASHC through 2027 are as follows: expand the Coalition's reach by adding states and members; provide professional development to members; (3) offer mini-grants for outreach projects and activities; (4) develop and disseminate new resources; and (5) provide occupational safety and health (OSH) updates for agricultural populations.

This article describes an interprofessional collaboration between Sanford Health and North Dakota State University that strengthens agricultural injury surveillance in the upper Midwest by using multiple sources of health data and geographic information systems (GIS) technology. We provide methodological insights and considerations for using and combining facility-level trauma registry (FLTR) data, national data sets, and GIS to identify areas with disproportionate agricultural injury prevalence. Additionally, we discuss the benefits of FLTR data, how and why it is collected, the data it contains, and how it can be combined with national datasets to fill-in surveillance gaps. Lastly, we offer recommendations for building cross-institutional and interprofessional partnerships.

Objectives: Agriculture is the one of the hazardous industries in the world. Though there is significant investment in agricultural safety, machine injuries continue to be the leading cause of agriculture injuries worldwide. The objective of this study was to provide a comprehensive literature review on global patterns in agricultural machine injuries and establish a framework for future research aimed at addressing safety concerns in the agriculture sector.

Methods: The existing scholarship on farm machine injuries can be categorized into three main areas: a) farming machine/equipment injuries, b) factors associated with these injuries, and c) injury patterns.

Results: Overall, the findings highlight that farm tractors are the primary source of injuries for both fatal and non-fatal incidents regardless of region. Other common sources of injuries were harvesting machinery and hand/power tools in Asia, ATVs in North America and woodworking machinery in Europe. Inadequate training in operating farm equipment was reported as the most likely factor contributing to machine-related injuries. Lastly, the patterns of injuries vary based on the interaction between humans and machinery. For instance, rollovers often result in severe head and fracture injuries, while thresher incidents can lead to amputation of hands, arms, and other body parts.

Conclusion: Addressing these injuries by implementing safety protocols will not only enhance the well-being of farm workers but potentially attract more workers to the sector, which is currently experiencing labor shortages due to machine-related injuries.

Objectives: This paper sought to determine risk factors of occupational injury in the Irish dairy farming sector and to estimate the roles of both dairying expansion and the discipline of agricultural extension in influencing reducing injury occurrence.

Methods: Data for this study was obtained via the Irish National Farm Survey (NFS). In total, 260 farm (83.6% of NFS dairy farm sample) workplace injury survey questionnaires were completed by NFS recorders by interviewing principal farm operators for year 2017. Injury survey data was analysed for 48 variables in conjunction with NFS core farm socio-economic, physical and financial data. Additionally, core data from 2010 for 78.5% of farms surveyed in 2017 was included in the study. Data were analysed using a three-step statistical testing process which met all Binary Logistic Regression assumptions.

Results: The study found that dairy farms had a higher farm workplace occupational injury level compared to a previous study. The study data indicates occurrence of elevated injury levels on farms which expanded and which were intensively managed from a milk production perspective. Farm expansion was associated with increased labor units used and increased investment per hectare. The study also found that use of extension services and farm discussion group participation were not associated with injury occurrence.

Conclusions: This study demonstrates how a retrospective farm workplace occupational injury survey of Irish dairy farms, analysed in combination with farm business data can be used to identify injury risk factors, including those associated with production expansion. Irish dairy farms have a heightened farm workplace occupation injury level while dairy production expansion increased injury levels. Extension engagement did not influence on injury levels. Approaches to improve farm safety on dairy farms are outlined.