Review of Health Effects Research - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 88

Transfer of research findings has been implemented through the OHNAC
program; the Agricultural Safety Promotion System (direct funding of state-level
agricultural safety specialists in land-grant institutions); fishing and forestry inter-
agency working groups; explicit funding of such projects as ergonomic interven-
tions for youth working in agricultural worksites and ergonomic designs for tools
and work areas in nurseries, turf and garden entities, and orchards; and specific
ERC-sponsored symposia and other training initiatives. The reach of those efforts
has been nation-wide for the agricultural sector and largely regional for the forestry
and fishing sectors. Stakeholders have been involved, particularly when the regional
Ag Centers and the ERCs anchored the transfer activity. Research and educational
capability were enhanced extramurally, and intramural capability in NIOSH also
expanded. Numerous basic scientists, clinicians, engineers, and other researchers
now active in the AFF arena received their original impetus from those efforts.
OUTPUTS
Major outputs of the AFF Program have been publications in scientific jour-
nals, fact sheets on the NIOSH Web site, summaries of disorder- or organ-system-
focused epidemiological projects (for example, the documents Epidemiology of
Farm-Related Injuries: Bibliography with Abstracts and Injury and Asthma Among
Youth Less Than 0 Years of Age on Minority Farm Operations in the United States,
000 ), and monographs (such as Simple Solutions: Ergonomics for Farm Workers ,
2001; Guide to Evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for Preventing Work Injuries ,
2001; and Childhood Agricultural Injury Prevention: Issues and Interventions from
Multiple Perspectives , 1992) designed to serve as tools for translating research to
practice. The degree to which those outputs addressed clinical problems varied
greatly, so each category of output is discussed separately below.
Injury Research and Ergonomics
The AFF Program has stimulated extensive research across the nation on trau-
matic injuries; deaths and disabling injuries account for a considerable proportion
of the intramural and extramural research. National Safety Council statistics in-
dicate that agriculture continues to rank as one of the most dangerous industries.
However, lack of a cohesive surveillance program makes it difficult to track the
effectiveness of the programs. Nonetheless, the AFF Program has attempted to
focus on some important subjects, such as tractor safety and rollover protection
structures (ROPS), for which cause and effect have been demonstrated. Research
in ergonomics seems to have been much more limited—despite its importance to
health and safety and to the mission of NIOSH—with several notable exceptions,