Social Marketing of Rollover Protection: A Multistate Expansion

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): An effective approach to stimulating the retrofitting of rollover protective structures (ROPS) on farm tractors could substantially reduce occupational fatality in farmers. The NY ROPS Retrofit Rebate Program's social marketing approach resulted in a ten-fold increase in ROPS kit purchases in its initial year. NY farmers exposed to social marketing efforts had greater shifts in stage of change and determinants of behavioral change. The Social Marketing of Rollover Protection: A Multistate Expansion project will test the hypothesis that the social marketing approach employed in the New York State Tractor ROPS Rebate program model and its products can be adapted by state-based teams to produce an increase in farm tractor ROPS retrofitting in other states of differing characteristics. The NY team will assist the state-based teams in completing formative assessments, audience segmentation, intervention design, pilot testing, and intervention introduction. State assets and stakeholder resources will be identified and recruited by an in-state project coordinator. Throughout this process instruments, techniques and messages developed in NY and elsewhere will be available to the state teams for use or adaptation. Consultants in social marketing will assist with formative work, message modification and marketing plans. The existing NY hotline assistance service will be re-designed to provide services to additional states. On-going evaluation will seek shifts in behavioral intent among targeted farmers as well as increases in ROPS purchases tracked through the hotline. An assessment board composed of experts from other high-risk states will meet every six months to evaluate adaptations to the NY model in each state and assess their impact. Through these assessment activities there will be a clear description of the adaptations required in the NY model and dissemination of a detailed understanding of the social marketing model to these other high-risk states will have been effectively completed. Public Health Relevance: Farmers experience occupational deaths at a rate that is eight times that of all American workers. Tractor rollovers are a leading cause of these fatalities. In recent years, a social marketing approach to the New York farm community has resulted in a ten-fold increase in the numbers of tractors being retrofitted with highly effective rollover protective structures (ROPS). This application proposes the systematic exporting of the NY program to Pennsylvania and Vermont while simultaneously training experts from five other high-risk states. The proposed project will be the first step to exporting this first broadly successful approach to retrofitting rollover protection on farm tractors to other states.