Nurse Agricultural Education Project
Now in its second 5-year phase, the Nurse Agricultural Education Project (NAEP) offers an evidence-based approach to the education and training of entry level, graduate level, and experienced nurses in agricultural occupational health. NAEP focuses on a part of the United States that is marked by significant needs: The South leads the nation in the number and percentage of total and rural populations in poverty (U.S. Census, 2006). Much of this region is medically underserved (Safran et al, 2005). Nurses and nurse practitioners are increasingly filling the gap in health services, helping to address the needs of more than one half million farm families and farm workers. Nevertheless, few nursing curricula explore the safety and health hazards associated with agriculture. Accordingly, NAEP aims to increase the agricultural health and safety knowledge of nurse educators, researchers, and nurse students; provide formats for the education of nurse educators and nurse researchers about agricultural illness/injury prevention; provide opportunities for students to participate in agricultural health research based on nursing principles; develop a networked cadre of agricultural health nurses; and determine how nurse educators use agricultural health within the context of their undergraduate and graduate curricula in nursing (i.e., continued tracking in the South).
NAEP incorporates multiple educational methods (Web-based instruction, continuing education, and visiting faculty) into existing baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs; continues periodic surveys of the 132 colleges of nursing in the Southern Nursing Research Society area; and provides student scholarships, faculty fellowships, the AgHERE List Serve, and consultative services for agricultural nursing research. The continual interface between research and clinical practice found in the project both exemplifies and advances the ideal of research to practice (r2p). NAEP is supported by CDC/NIOSH Cooperative Agreement U50 OH007547 through the Southeast Center for Agricultural Health and Injury Prevention and the University of Kentucky College of Nursing.
For more information contact - Deborah Reed, PhD, RN, C, MSPH Associate Professor University of Kentucky College of Nursing Room 553 College of Nursing Building Lexington, KY 40536-0232 859-257-9636