Other Programmatic Elements Identified by the Committee - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 136

Variations of the health screening and farm inspection process have been developed
for different forms of production agriculture in the Midwest. Self-reported data
pertaining to the costs of occupational injury and illness paid by participants and
their insurers were collected.
Healthcare Provider Training Several universities that have medical schools—
such as the University of Illinois, the University of Iowa, and the University of
Minnesota—have received funding from NIOSH to design and implement oc-
cupational health training programs for physicians, nurses, and other healthcare
providers and persons who do not have a healthcare background in agricultural
health. The programs are well established and use AFF Program resources to extend
work to neighboring states. Although the programs have responded to the obvi-
ous need for training, the committee notes that the programs would benefit from
greater physician input in course content and clinical approach.
Occupational Health Nurses in Agricultural Communities (OHNAC) From
1990 through 1996, the AFF Program funded 31 public health nurses in rural com-
munities in 10 states (California, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, New
York, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Ohio) to conduct case-based, and some-
times rate-based, surveillance. In 1995, the program funded continued surveillance
under the banner of Community Partners for Healthy Farming Surveillance. States
that were funded under the original OHNAC project and later funded by Com-
munity Partners for Healthy Farming Surveillance usually retained OHNAC in the
titles of their programs. The surveillance projects addressed multiple agricultural
subsectors. For simplicity, both surveillance projects will usually be referred to
hereinafter as OHNAC.
Northwest Community Health Worker Network Extramural AFF Program re-
searchers engaged the Hispanic farmworker community through two community-
based participatory research projects in Washington and Idaho. Together with the
Washington Association of Community and Migrant Health Centers, researchers
established the Northwest Community Health Worker Network and listserv, and
they provided professional education to clinicians and trained community health
workers in prevention and diagnosis of and treatment for pesticide poisoning.
Take-home Pesticide Exposure Study The primary purpose of the take-home
pesticide exposure study conducted by the University of Washington was to de-
scribe the sources of pesticide contamination in farm homes and investigate the
relationship between clinically documented contamination and pesticide exposure
of family members in the home. A combination of environmental and biological