Great Plains Center for Agricultural Health

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT – GREAT PLAINS CENTER FOR AGRICULTURAL HEALTH (OVERALL) The Great Plains Center for Agricultural Health conducts research and provides outreach to reduce the burden of injury and illness facing Midwest agricultural producers, particularly those hazards associated with both large and small row crop and livestock/animal production. This Center will serve a nine-state region: who share these production similarities: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Our vision of safe and healthy agricultural communities is accomplished through basic and applied research, use of participatory approaches, and theory-driven education and translation activities. Our research projects are designed to address multiple hazards important to both the NIOSH national strategic priorities and priorities for our region’s farming workforce. The research questions being proposed will: reduce the burden of back pain from a lifetime of tractor use, provide resources to help families of aging farmers transition to safer work at multiple stages of dementia, provide tools to help farmers identify and reduce high- risk hazards in their physical environment, reduce injuries from farm vehicles on roadways, and improve the respiratory health of livestock producers and the animals they raise. Research proposes to develop innovative technologies needed to close gaps in knowledge (whole-body vibration), awareness of hazards (safety checklist app), and equipment (air quality systems), and innovative partnerships (e.g., Alzheimer’s Association, state extension health educators) bring new collaborators with unique skills to contribute to agricultural injury reduction. Partnerships throughout the Center projects and cores, including advisory boards and focus group participants, will provide essential information to enhance the adoption of tools being developed and/or tested across the Center portfolio. The lessons learned from our research initiatives will be translated into outreach materials by being incorporated into national educational curricula, disseminated through partners, and incorporated into multimedia discussions (social media, print media-Safety Watch, and FarmSafe podcasts) to aid in the dissemination and uptake of these best practices. The Center will establish and support systems to foster communication, identify and build strategic partnerships, and assess the needs of the agricultural community. Our evaluators will work within all projects and Cores to maximize our ability assess the Center’s contributions to improved health and safety outcomes for our region’s farmers. The Great Plains Center for Agricultural Health has demonstrated its contributions to improving knowledge and practices to protect the health and safety of agricultural workers throughout the Midwest, and we are ideally positioned, with strong regional collaborators, to generate and disseminate evidence-based practices, guidelines, and controls to protect this essential workforce.