Agricultural Safety and Health Training for Public Health Graduate Students

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DESCRIPTION (Provided by Applicant): We propose to develop and offer a training project grant (TPG) focused on agricultural health and safety for students seeking a Master of Public Health (MPH) or Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) degree. The program will be administered by the NIOSH-funded Southeast Center for Agricultural Health & Injury Prevention at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health. The proposed Health of Agricultural Populations (HAP) TPG will apply agricultural safety and health training across traditional public health coursework, research training and field experiences. The HAP-TPG will add cross-cutting competencies for occupational safety and health in agriculture into four public health disciplines, specifically health services management, health behavior, epidemiology, and environmental health. The HAP-TPG expands on a successful small-scale MPH and DrPH agricultural health curriculum funded in 2001 via the Southeast Center. The currently offered agricultural health curriculum sequence is not a TPG, and it provides only fractional tuition and research support without stipends. As of August 2005, 2 DrPH students and 2 MPH students have graduated with a HAP Emphasis Area designation, and 9 students (8 MPH and 1 DrPH) are currently enrolled in the HAP curriculum. We anticipate 6 additional students will join the program when fall semester 2005 classes begin. MPH students in the proposed HAP-TPG will require 41-44 semester hours to graduate, of which 20 semester hours will be directly related to agricultural health and safety and injury research. DrPH students in the proposed HAP-TPG will need to complete 74-78 semester hours to graduate, of which 23-29 semester hours will be HAP-TPG related. Between 2006 and 2011, at least 16 MPH and 4 DrPH graduates of the TPG are expected. Strong evaluation and diversity recruitment strategies are planned. The University of Kentucky is committing $58,128 per year for tuition for students enrolled in this TPG. The new TPG program is highly relevant to public health because it will increase the number of public health practitioners and researchers who address agricultural occupational problems through prevention, intervention, practice and research.