Projects

  • About SCAHIP Projects
  • Current Projects
  • Completed Projects
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Since its inception in 1992, the Southeast Center has built and maintained a strong, transdisciplinary, “team science” approach to agricultural occupational safety and health. The team of investigators and key personnel funded through CDC/NIOSH Cooperative Agreement 2U54OH00757 includes nationally recognized leaders in public health, agricultural engineering, epidemiology, medicine and nursing, curriculum and instructional design, and communications.  Together, these men and women are applying a holistic, systems-oriented approach to studying and solving persistent, emerging, and historically under-studied problems in agricultural occupational safety and health. This work is critical because workers in production agriculture, forestry, commercial fishing (AFF) and hunting experience a work-related fatality rate that is more than 7 times higher than that of all other industries (DOL 2011).

In the past, worker protection often emphasized behavioral training and the repetition of safety rules, with compliance sought through regulatory and administrative means. Less attention was paid to the importance of control technologies and to the circumstances and contingencies that cause individuals who know safety rules to violate those rules and risk injury or death. Equally scant attention was paid to the direct and indirect costs of injury for the worker, employer, and other stakeholders. Recognizing this gap, the Center has conceived, developed and evaluated a set of narrative simulation exercises and computerized cost-analysis tools that are effective in promoting voluntary risk/hazard reduction among adult workers and youth alike. These materials have been developed, field-tested and evaluated through the Kentucky ROPS Project (completed), Preventing Farm Injuries to Rural Youth (completed), and the Economics of Preventing Agricultural Injuries to Adolescent & Adult Farmers (ongoing).

Other Center projects and activities address vulnerable populations (e.g., migrant and seasonal farm workers, older farmers), while two major translational projects, Nurses Utilizing Research, Service, Education and Practice (NURSE-AP) and Teaching Public Health Students about Agricultural Safety & Health, are helping to train and equip highly skilled professionals for our nation’s public health workforce. These projects constitute a model response to Healthy People 2020 objectives for further integrating core competencies in public health education, cultivating a highly skilled public health workforce, and improving public health infrastructure and preparedness (DHSS, 2010).

AgConnections newsletter

NIOSH Agricultural Centers newsletter

On behalf of the NIOSH Agricultural Centers for Disease and Injury Research, Education, and Prevention, the Southeast Center is pleased to produce the quarterly nationwide newsletter for stakeholders, Ag Connections. 

Archived copies (2009 and prior) may be found on the National Agricultural Safety Database www.nasdonline.org

AgConnections newsletter border

The Southeast Center’s research to practice (r2p) activities are based on working partnerships with farm operators and employees, vocational agricultural instructors, Extension agents, and leaders in public health, nursing, engineering and other disciplines. We are proud to note the contributions of lifelong and part-time farmers among our students and faculty, whose hands-on experience has been instrumental in developing popular Center materials. These include, but are not limited to, the following examples: