Strengthening Organizational Capacity to Prevent Childhood Agricultural Injuries
The goal of this project is to expand the adoption of best practices to protect children from agricultural injuries and deaths by bridging evidence-based safety guidelines and childhood agricultural safety campaigns with organizations and corporations in a position to influence their adoption. The proposed work targets the Organization/Institution level of the Socio-Ecological Model, with the potential to have substantial influence on communities, interpersonal relations, and adults responsible for children’s safety.
This project has been successful in strengthening capacity in child agricultural injury prevention over the last five years through several different activities and approaches:
- Developed and conducted four Child Agricultural Injury Prevention Workshops, held in various locations across the U.S. The workshops attracted over 100 participants spanning the agricultural industry (insurance, media, Extension, child safety organizations, educators, etc.) from across the U.S. and Canada.
- Delivered presentations and offered exhibits and interactive activities at numerous conferences and events, including the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies Ag Risk Inspection School (pictured above), the National FFA Expo, the North American Farm Direct Marketing Association, Farm Bureau Conferences, Farm Credit East sponsored events and numerous others.
- Participation in several external organizations’ steering committees and advisory boards, such as the International Society for Agricultural Safety and Health, AgriSafe, Children’s Safety Now Alliance (Children’s Safety Network), SAY National Steering Committee and several others.
- Communicated child ag safety information and materials through press releases, media interviews, and newsletter publications.
- Conducted a needs assessment to assess the items (e.g. knowledge, training, resources) external agricultural safety and health stakeholder organizations need to build their capacity in child agricultural injury prevention (CAIP), and use these findings to generate recommendations for future NCCRAHS activities.
Results from this project to date have enabled NCCRAHS to strengthen their partnerships and networking across the agricultural industry and gather key information on the child agricultural injury prevention needs of other organizations. This enables NCCRAHS to plan future capacity building activities targeted to the needs of the agricultural industry using established networks.