Program Scoring and Rationale - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 156

Many in the AFF industries are well aware that safety and health are woven into
the fabric of successful businesses. As illustrated by the tragic loss of life associated
with the recent sinkings of fishing vessels off New Bedford, important gaps still
allow extremely dangerous conditions to continue.
NIOSH has a unique role as the only federal agency capable of convening all
players dedicated to preventing workplace injury and disease, and it has deployed
itself credibly on this task and funded other partners to function in consensus-
building roles. NIOSH-sponsored symposia and workshops have had a great impact
on the work of many occupational safety and health professionals and probably
on the lives of AFF workers, but it is difficult to measure the direct impact of these
indispensable capacity-building activities on worker safety and health.
The AFF Program has made important contributions to occupational health
services and training endeavors across the nation. The committee members them-
selves have benefited from NIOSH-sponsored meetings and symposia, which have
sparked the interest of occupational safety and health practitioners and provided
others with valuable avenues for professional growth that would otherwise not have
been available. It remains vital that NIOSH continue such support because it has
singular influence in convening clinicians, scientists, and training institutions; con-
ducting clinical research that produces occupational training insight; prescribing
appropriate content for occupational training; and providing scientific and clini-
cal evidence that informs practice standards. But there is room for improvement.
For example, there is a need for physicians to become more involved in preparing
training materials and to enroll in training courses. In light of the growing numbers
of schools of public health, there is a need to prepare appropriate education and
training curriculum materials for health professionals.
The AFF Program evidence package and supplemental materials lacked substan-
tial data demonstrating changes in the annual number of occupational fatalities or dis-
abling injuries in hired farm workers and several other populations. The lack of data
may be attributed in part to the failure to conduct surveillance comprehensively
and to poor data management and collection; it may also be attributed to external
factors as previously discussed in Chapter 3. There was also a lack of evidence of
concerted efforts to address hazards, safety, and health in forestry workers and in
fishermen outside of Alaska.
Worker populations have not been adequately defined or tracked, therefore
injuries and illnesses and changes in these populations have not been documented.
The AFF Program's unfamiliarity with standard sources of data on hired farm-
worker employment, including the long-established U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) quarterly Farm Labor , is an indication of its inability to obtain accurate
denominator data for its separate populations. The program has not used state-
level data and data from other sources, such as workers' compensation insurance