A Scoping Review of Safety and Health Interventions in the High-Risk Dairy Industry: Gaps in Evidence Point to Future Directions in Research.

The occupational injury rate of the dairy industry (6.6 per 100 full-time workers) is twice that of the national average across all industries (3.3 per 100 full-time workers). While dairy farms are becoming larger in size and fewer in number, this rate has not changed. A scoping review was conducted to identify published reports of occupational safety interventions in the dairy industry. An additional criterion was that the study included an evaluation of the intervention. Out of 22 articles that met the first criterion (discussion of interventions specific to the dairy industry), 19 met the second of having an evaluative component. These 19 articles corresponded to 16 unique studies, because 4 articles corresponded to the same study. Of the 16 unique studies, only 3 had a comparison of treatment vs. control effects, and none measured the impact of the intervention on injuries and fatalities. Of the 16 interventions, 6 were focused on training or informational campaigns in which the evaluations primarily measured knowledge acquisition. Additionally, none of these studies had a sufficient sample size to compare injury rates as an outcome. Our study demonstrates that the literature lacks any rigorous evaluation of whether dairy safety interventions are making an impact on injury prevention. Given this, it is not possible to determine how work-related injuries and deaths can be prevented in the dairy industry. Recommendations for future research include incorporating rigorous evaluation into research designs and attempting to develop low-cost, unobtrusive methods for collecting data on intermediate and final outcomes.

Farm safety education in New York Mennonite schools.

This intervention delivers agricultural safety information to Mennonite youth, grades 1 to 8 in their schools. The purpose is to reduce injuries in the Groffdale Conference, an Old Order Mennonite community in Yates County, New York. The New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health (NYCAMH) assisted community members to create an appropriate farm safety presentation for Mennonite children. A vital aspect of this approach is that members of the Old Order community are the educators who are delivering the information in a culturally appropriate manner. As an outside organization, it is unlikely that NYCAMH would have access to this population to directly deliver youth farm safety education.

On-farm safety program.

Rates of fatal occupational injuries in New York agriculture far outstrip the average for all American workers. Among its various approaches to this problem, the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health (NYCAMH) sponsored an On-Farm Safety Program that sought to reduce farm worksite hazards and to enhance understanding of safe farm practices through a two-step process. First, an on-farm hazard survey identified hazards that may lead to farm injury and suggested improvements to correct those hazards. Second, on-farm safety training sessions were offered to increase safety knowledge and influence adoption of safe work practices. Over a 2-year period, 124 farms were surveyed and 187 safety training sessions were conducted on a total of 271 New York farms. Follow-up phone surveys were conducted with 97 (78%) of the on-farm survey sites at roughly 6 months. Of the 97 survey farms that completed the telephone survey, 77 (79%) reported having made safety improvements. Hazards resolved tended to be less labor intensive and expensive than some of the other hazards observed. Ninety-six (99%) of the farms that completed the telephone follow-up survey found the on-farm visits useful and said that NYCAMH should continue to offer the On-Farm Safety Program. No data were collected to assess the impact of these efforts upon occupational injury and illness. This appears to be an effective means of outreach to heighten safety awareness of the farm population and to address some of the observed worksite hazards. It is unclear whether this approach substantially impacts the elevated risk of injury in agriculture.