Recommendations for Program Improvement - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 184

Evaluation in Public Health, should be adopted and consistently applied to all
NIOSH programs.
Develop a Cohesive Program
Recommendation 2: The AFF Program should provide national leadership
and coordination of research and transfer activities in agricultural, forestry,
and fishing safety and health.
NIOSH has a unique role as a federal agency that directly funds occupational
safety and health research through its intramural and extramural programs. As
such, it is able to shape national priorities, strategies for action, and evaluation of
health and safety programs in AFF. NIOSH is in a position to influence the direc-
tion and priorities of the regional and topical Ag Centers that it funds, and to lead
and coordinate the work of related non-Ag Center projects. Those efforts need to
be based on national goals and strategic planning, as mentioned in the previous
recommendation, and should result in a coordinated effort aimed at develop-
ing and maintaining systems for comprehensive data collection, archiving, and
sharing, and for research in and surveillance and evaluation of transfer activities.
Exercising such national leadership would provide coherence and linkage among
the diverse organizations engaged in intramural and extramural research and
external partners. The national tractor initiative should not be the only project in
which activities and strategies are nationally coordinated. Other agencies—such
as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation, and
the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)—achieve such coherence by linking
databases and structuring the request for application (RFA) and request for pro-
posal (RFP) processes.
To follow this recommendation, NIOSH should create a national coordinat-
ing council that includes key stakeholders and the directors of the Ag Centers.
The council would oversee strategic research goals (for example, in health effects,
intervention, and health services research) and provide direction for occupational
safety and health training so that the most pressing clinical needs are addressed.
Coordination requires a process for maintaining continuous communication with
all stakeholders; annual regional and national workshops and conferences are
examples of an appropriate mechanism for strengthening leadership and coordi-
nation. The AFF Program should continue to convene symposia to explore con-
temporary AFF worksite and environmental exposures, because it has an essential
role in the training of health services professionals. Discussion of basic methods
already in use in the field is slow to reach health and safety practitioners in rural
areas, and the meetings would help to educate rural practitioners. Practitioners'