Promoting farm health and safety
What you don’t know can hurt you
CUCRH’s most recent project in farm health examines first aid and responses to medical emergencies on isolated farms and stations. Funding from Western Australia’s Department of Health to Farm Safe Alliance WA is making it possible to measure the incidence of medical emergencies and farmers’ and pastoralists’ knowledge of first aid. A reference group of key health services and representatives of people on farms and stations will ensure that the information will be used to improve the management of medical emergencies for this important group.
A culture of farm safety
Preventing injuries is more than remembering to lock the storage cupboard, it is a matter of culture. Dr Tony Lower and Angela Durey undertook a preliminary description of this culture among farming and station families in the Midwest. The results of a number of in-depth interviews with men and women exposed strong gender differences. Their analysis has been published in Rural Society (Durey and Lower 2004).
Farm and station women’s roles in preventing injuries
Many farm injury prevention campaigns identify women as critical players. However, do women actually take on this role and do they want it? Isabelle Ellis and Peter Shaw of CUCRH conducted an interesting study to investigate this with funding from the Injury Prevention Branch of the WA Department of Health.
The report revealed women who have a strong stake in the management of their property also have a significant interest in injury prevention on their land. We also found that all women had an important safety norming role in their “zone of influence” but that this was closely related to their roles in the family business. These findings have implications for determining strategies for improving safety on farms and stations. The full report can be downloaded here (pdf format).
Does training prevent farm motorcycle and all-terrain vehicle injuries?
This was the question that Dr Tony Lower and colleagues asked. Virtually every farm kid has used one and nine thousand are sold every year. An earlier Australian study estimated that 50% of ATV riders aged 15-19 years have incurred an injury while riding in the previous two years. This same study illustrated that only a very small percentage have undertaken formal training. But training has had mixed results in preventing automobile crashes by young drivers, so an intervention study was needed. With funding from Rural Industries Research
and Development Corporation (RIRDC) and support of Honda Australia, a randomised control trial of agricultural students was conducted.
Year 11 and 12 students at six agricultural colleges were surveyed about their use of farm motorcycles and ATVs and their experience of injuries. The results of this baseline study have been published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health (Lower, Egginton & Owen 2003). Schools were assigned as interventions or controls. Students at the intervention schools received a Honda Australia accredited ATV training course which covered preventative maintenance as well as safe riding technique. All students were followed up each year for two years.
Unfortunately the original sample size was too small to detect differences in subsequent injury rates between the two groups. This problem was compounded by low response rates in the follow-up surveys due to difficulties in contacting students who moved. Nevertheless the study highlighted a number of issues related to preventative measures. Recommendations cover policy, educational and engineering initiatives which should reduce this form of farming injuries.
