Subscribers Drive Growth for AgInjuryNews.org in 2020
In 2020, AgInjuryNews.org observed inbound web traffic from more than 2,700 unique users across approximately 6,100 sessions and 57,000 total page views. This included visitors from 54 different countries, with over 2,600 first-time visitors. The average duration users remained on the site improved by 23% compared to 2019, with typical sessions lasting over 10 minutes per visitor. AgInjuryNews.org also fulfilled 220 new user registrations and new e-newsletter subscriptions, bringing the total subscriber count to just under 1,000. This includes more than 50 user accounts within the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, indicated by a “bls.gov” email address. Finally, 724 new cases were published in 2020, bringing the total available reports to over 3,800 and a victim count of nearly 4,200.
2021 Virtual ASHCA Summit
The North American Agricultural Safety Summit will take place online March 22-24, 2021.
The summit will match evidence-based safety interventions with production practices and emerging safety issues. Network with agricultural safety and agribusiness leaders; gain access to best practices and programs for agricultural workers. Like previous summits hosted by the Agricultural Safety and Health Council of America (ASHCA), the event will focus on strengthening relationships to identify, test and implement cost-effective, practical safety strategies to enhance the well-being of workers in U.S. agriculture.

This is the sixth issue of the AgInjuryNews quarterly newsletter. We hope these will keep our users and collaborators better informed of ongoing initiatives and milestone achievements. As always, if you have any questions, please connect with us.

New 5-year Study Launched to Assess Impact of News Reports
This recently launched 5-year study is part of the NIOSH-funded National Children’s Center for Rural & Agricultural Health and Safety.

Project title: Assessing the Impact of Traumatic Injury News Articles on Farm Parents and Educators

The project aims to reduce childhood agricultural injury by changing farm mothers' and farm educators' knowledge, attitudes, and behavioral intentions (KAB) towards agricultural safety. This will be done through exposing mothers and educators to news reports of childhood agricultural injury and measuring their changes in KAB. This is based on the mechanisms and theory described in the Extended Parallel Process Model, as well as the theory of Fear Appeal. We will recruit 200 farm mothers and 200 farm educators through online social media. They will then complete a pre-test survey to determine baseline levels of KAB towards agricultural injury. After this they will read childhood agricultural injury news reports and complete an assignment regarding the content of these reports. Participants will repeat this once per week for 4 weeks. Participants will complete a post-test survey to measure changes in KAB. A 1 and 2-year follow-up survey will be sent to participants to identify actualization of these changes. Through partnerships with our internal Outreach team and external Steering Committee members, we will broadly disseminate our findings. This includes peer-reviewed manuscripts, news media, social media posts, boosts, and advertisements. This project is supplemented with strong mentorship and guidance including the 15-member cross-discipline steering committee for AgInjuryNews.org, a publicly available dataset of agricultural injuries created by this research team. The steering committee includes researchers and directors of NIOSH Ag Centers, university professors and Extension, and industry professionals.
The major goals of this 5-year study are to:
1.    Examine the effects of agricultural injury news consumption on readers' knowledge and behavioral intentions for safety behaviors.
2.  Explore underlying mechanisms of the agricultural injury news consumption effects on behavioral intention.


If you have any questions about the study, please contact our team and vist the web page: https://marshfieldresearch.org/nccrahs/TraumaticInjuryImpact 
Project Investigator team:
Bryan Weichelt, PhD - Marshfield Clinic Research Institute
Kang Namkoong, PhD - University of Maryland
Richard Burke, MPH – Marshfield Clinic Research Institute
Emily Redmond – Marshfield Clinic Research Institute
How to Use Media Reports in Your Work
Presentations, Training, Tailgate Talks
– AIN can assist by helping presenters and trainers to identify cases in their audience's state or region. Introducing a topic (e.g. ATV safety) with a story of traumatic injury or death can be effective in grasping and maintaining the audience's attention.
Bureau of Labor Statistics and other government data specialists
– AIN can be helpful in identifying cases of interest and providing supplemental reports to existing occupational injury data.
Safety specialists focused on a specific topic
– Alerts can also be configured to automatically send users a weekly, monthly, or annual report of the specific data in which they are interested(e.g. only cases from WI, MN, IA involving youth and tractors).
Media / Journalists
- Some journalists have used AIN to find similar cases to the one they're interested in writing about so they could contact a local family for an interview.
Factors Affecting Ag Injury Coder Agreement Recently Published
In a collaborative study led by Dr. Serap Gorucu at the University of Florida, this team sought to explore coding discrepancies and agreements, specifically focused on FAIC and OIICS.

“This study assessed and compared the level of agreement between coders when coding traumatic agricultural incidents. There was a high level of agreement between the coders in FAIC coding, and at the 3-digit level of OIICS source and event categories. Quantifying the level of agreement for agricultural injuries led to a better understanding of coding discrepancies and also uncovered areas for improvement.”

“Coders 1 and 2 provided the same initial FAIC codes for 1,161 of the 1,304 cases (89%). This level of agreement, based on Kappa and K-alpha scores, is considered ‘almost perfect’ (Kappa = 0.85, K-alpha = 0.82) by the coding agreement literature…”

For more details of the study, please visit: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2020.08.006
Published Abstracts
Weichelt B, Gorucu S, Shutske J, Scott E, Burke R, Murphy DJ, Rautiainen R. JA:2021-40. What about the Rest of Them? Their Lives Mattered Too: Fatal Agricultural Injuries Not Captured by BLS/CFOI. J Agromedicine. 2020;25(3):263. DOI: 10.1080/1059924X.2020.1765612
 
Sauer M, Ploeckelman M, Pilz M, Redmond E, Burke R, Koshalek K, Heiberger S, Weichelt B. JA:2021-30. Constant Contact ® Readership Analytics: Lessons Learned. J Agromedicine. 2020;25(3):254-255. DOI: 10.1080/1059924X.2020.1765586
 
Redmond E, Gorucu S, Sauer M, Burke R, Pilz M, Weichelt B. JA:2021-25. Increasing Efficiency and Reliability of Agricultural Injury and Fatality Coding with Standard Operating Procedures: Lessons Learned from AgInjuryNews.org. J Agromedicine. 2020;25(3):250-251. DOI: 10.1080/1059924X.2020.1765579
 
Pilz M, Burke R, Redmond E, Sauer M, Weichelt M. JA:2021-23. Ideal Tracking and Analytics: Incorporating Modern Toolsets to Enhance Analysis of User Acquisition and Behavior on

AgInjuryNews.org. J Agromedicine. 2020;25(3):248-249. DOI: 10.1080/1059924X.2020.1765575
 
Gorucu S, Weichelt B, Denning G, Jennissen C, Oesch S. JA:2021-10. The Epidemiology of All-Terrain- Vehicle Injuries: 2015-2017. J Agromedicine. 2020;25(3):238. DOI: 10.1080/1059924X.2020.1763737
 
Burke R, Pilz M, Redmond E, Sauer M, Weichelt B. JA:2021-3. Dissemination and Adoption of AgInjuryNews.org: A Publicly Available Collection of Agricultural Injury Media Reports. J Agromedicine. 2020;25(3):232-233. DOI: 10.1080/1059924X.2020.1763725
 
AIN was cited in a poster titled "Analysis of Agricultural Injuries in Florida" authored by Serap Gorucu, PhD
https://icash.public-health.uiowa.edu/wp- content/uploads/2020/11/GORUCU_10-31-00.pdf
Migrant Clinicians Network & NCCRAHS team up to create vital booklet
The Migrant Clinicians Network (MCN) and the National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety (NCCRAHS) teamed up to offer this second edition. The popular resource offers a colorful comic book to help promote pesticide safety to farmworkers and their families. It includes messages about ways to minimize exposure, offering preventative concepts through illustration and conversation-style text.
The booklets, which are available in English and Spanish, can he downloaded here: https://www.migrantclinician.org/toolsource/resource/comic-aunque-cerca...sano.html
Online Training Protecting Young Workers in Agriculture
New; free online training aimed at supervisors of young agricultural workers is available in English and Spanish with a goal to protect younger workers. Co-Principal Investigators Diane Rohlman, Ph.D., and Shelly Campo, Ph.D., both University of Iowa professors, took the Total Worker Health approach while developing the “Protecting Young Workers in Agriculture” training in conjunction with the National Children’s Center. The training can assist supervisors, parents, and teachers with topics such as best practices in supervision, training adolescents and young adults more effectively, facilitating difficult conversations, considering updates in workplace policies, and more. The training and supplemental materials can be found at www.healthierworkforcecenter.org.

Here’s what people are saying about the training:
·    “Really good information; things I’ll be able to use when working with youth on our farm. We are very aware of what a dangerous line of work we are in!” – Iowa Farmer
·    “I have completed the training and thought the training information was presented well and would like my supervisors to also participate. I also like that there is a Certificate of Training Completion available once the training is complete.” – HR Manager
“I am impressed with the high quality of the writing, organizational structure of the material, and the insight of the key messaging.” – Senior Safety Consultant 
North Central Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Center
Interested in what the North Central Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Center has been up to? The November newsletter is available here:

The AgInjuryNews Core Team
Bryan Weichelt PhD, MBA, Associate Research Scientist, NFMC
Emily Redmond 
Research Coordinator & Data Specialist, NFMC
Serap Gorucu PhD,
Assistant Professor
University of Florida
Matt Pilz
Programmer/Analyst, NFMC
Rick Burke, MPH
Research Specialist, NFMC
Megan Sauer
Research Assistant, NFMC

Contributors to this Issue
In addition to our Core Team, listed above, the following have contributed to this issue of the AIN Newsletter: Scott Heiberger and Marie Fleisner.

Follow Us
This is the sixth issue of the AgInjuryNews quarterly e-newsletter. To unsubscribe, email nccrahs@marshfieldclinic.org