Southeast Center for Agricultural Health and Injury Prevention

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Southeast Center for Agricultural Health and Injury Prevention at the University of Kentucky proposes to continue functioning as a NIOSH Agricultural Center for the next five-year funding cycle. The Center is one of three centers of excellence within the College of Public Health. The Center's location on a land-grant campus permits extraordinary collaboration between the primary disciplines assembled for the projects in this renewal: Public health, agriculture, behavioral science, communications, economics, education, engineering, epidemiology, nursing, and toxicology. The Center's theme is Trans-disciplinary Approaches to Improve Agricultural Safety and Health in the Southeast. The choice of a trans-disciplinary theme, rather than a multidisciplinary one, reflects the ability of our faculty and staff to work together in ways that comprehensively and synergistically build on each other's expertise and experience. The geographic region of the Center will be the ten southern states of AL, FL, GA, KY, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, and WV. In addition to an administrative/planning/outreach core, a total of 11 projects are proposed. Of these projects, two are comprehensive research and three are exploratory research; additionally, two are prevention/intervention projects, and four are education/translation projects. The issues in the 11 projects represent emerging, ignored, or persistent safety and health concerns in southeastern agriculture and they integratively coordinate topics including pesticide surveillance, tractor overturns, prison farm labor, benzene exposure, aquacultural health and safety, education in both public health and nursing, communications with farmers, and others. An administrative core provides management, leadership support, and strategic planning for the Center, as well as outreach activities to the ten states. Each year, four feasibility project grants at $12,500 each will be solicited and awarded. The Center strives to build public health infrastructure to reduce occupational injuries, deaths, poisonings, diseases, and illness in farming, fishing, and forestry. A substantial institutional commitment of $100,000 and other resources will be provided by the University of Kentucky.