This project will evaluate the effectiveness of two production agriculture interventions that seek to reduce traumatic and musculoskeletal injuries. We plan to build on two on-going efforts: an intervention among dairy producers now completing its 3rd year and an intervention with fresh market vegetable growers now completing its 2nd year by accomplishing three specific aims: 1. Continue the two interventions for 24 additional months. We will reduce hazards (and thereby injuries) by encouraging dairy producers in Wisconsin and vegetable growers in a four state region (WI, IA, MI, MN) to adopt safer and more profitable production methods through a specially-designed information dissemination effort via the print media, public events, university Extension, the Internet, and other information channels that producers and growers already use to gather information about new production methods. We will begin continuing the interventions in the first year of this application (Mar00). 2. Evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions. We plan to refine and continue, for two additional years, a number of process evaluation methods and annual mail questionnaires that are largely outcome evaluation methods. We will continue to administer these questionnaires to separate, population-based probability samples from each of the study groups (dairy n=1200/yr, vegetable n=800/yr) and to controls (300 Maryland dairy farmers, 200 strawberry growers) to determine: 1) if our materials are reaching and being received well by the target audiences, 2) if farmer adoption or awareness of each innovation or perceptions of relative safety or profit advantages are changing, and 3) if farmer-reported injuries or musculoskeletal discomfort associated with the innovations are changing. We will also solicit farmer perceptions about barriers to adopting the innovations we have been promoting and about how to make our intervention efforts more persuasive. We will evaluate each year of the two additional intervention years (Feb01, Feb02). 3. Add new production method innovations to each intervention. We will seek out farmer reports about production method innovations that could improve both safety and profits and then study and quantitatively evaluate the hazard-reducing and profit-enhancing aspects of the best candidates. We will then develop materials and a promotion plan for one or more innovations that can be added to each of the two ongoing intervention efforts each year. We will begin this work at the start of this project (Sept99).
| Chapman, Larry J; Brunette, Christopher M; Karsh, Ben-Tzion et al. (2011) A 4-year intervention to increase adoption of safer dairy farming work practices. Am J Ind Med 54:232-43 |
| Chapman, Larry J; Karsh, Ben-Tzion; Taveira, Alvaro D et al. (2009) Intervention to increase adoption of safer dairy farming production practices. Public Health Rep 124 Suppl 1:125-33 |
