© 2006 American Public Health Association DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2003.035428
Anne Gadomski, Patrick Burdick, and Paul Jenkins are with the Research Institute, Bassett Hospital, Cooperstown, NY. Susan Ackerman is with the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health, Fly Creek. Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Anne Gadomski, MD, MPH, Research Institute, Bassett Healthcare, One Atwell Rd, Cooperstown, NY 13326 (e-mail: anne.gadomski{at}bassett.org).
Objectives. We assessed whether active dissemination of the North American Guidelines for Childrens Agricultural Tasks (NAGCAT) reduced childhood agricultural injuries. Methods. In this randomized controlled trial, lay educators visited intervention farms to review NAGCAT. New York State farms with resident or working children were randomized. Control farms were visited only to collect baseline data. Data on childhood injuries, tasks, and hours worked were obtained quarterly for 21 months. Injury rates per farm were compared between the treatment and control groups, along with time span to occurrence of an injury and to violation of NAGCAT age guidelines. Results. Intervention farms were less likely than control farms to violate NAGCAT age guidelines in the areas of all-terrain-vehicle use and tractor and haying operations. Cox proportional hazards regression models showed a significant protective effect of the intervention on preventable injuries after adjustment for important covariates. Conclusions. Our results showed that dissemination of NAGCAT reduced rates of work-related childhood agricultural injuries. A comprehensive public health approach is needed to reduce nonwork-related childhood injuries.
Annual rates of agricultural injuries among children living or working on farms are high, on the order of about 1.7 injuries per 100 farms.1,2 For example, among young people less than 20 years of age, the rate of farm injuries requiring an emergency department visit increased 10% between the period spanning 1979 to 1983 (1551 per 100 000 child farm residents) and the period spanning 1990 to 1993 (1717 per 100 000).3 Because hours worked is a proxy for exposure to agricultural injuries and young people often work part time, injury rates related to agricultural work can be expressed as injury incidents per 100 full-time equivalents (FTEs). Between 1995 and 1997, farm workers aged 15 to 17 years had an injury rate of 1.8 per 100 FTEs.4 In an attempt to reduce childhood agricultural injuries, and at the request of farm parents, the National Childrens Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety in Marshfield, Wis, created the North American Guidelines for Childrens Agricultural Tasks (NAGCAT).5 These guidelines (available online at http://www.nagcat.org), developed by a team of agricultural safety professionals, child development experts, farm parents, and adolescents using a job hazard analysis framework, consensus development methodology, and child development principles, are specifically designed to assist parents in matching a childs physical, mental, and psychosocial abilities with the requirements of certain farm jobs. Targeting young people aged 7 to 16 years, the 62 guidelines address 7 categories of routine jobs: animal care, manual labor, haying operations, implement operations, specialty production, tractor fundamentals, and general activities. Each guideline includes color illustrations of the job, a description of primary hazards and safety equipment and recommendations for supervision, adult responsibilities regarding workplace safety, and a flow chart assessment of the childs ability to do the job. A review of nonfatal childhood agricultural injury incidence and disability underscores the paucity of data available for evaluating efforts to prevent such injuries.6 A systematic review of farm safety interventions revealed only 3 studies, none including children, in which injury incidence was used as an outcome.7 The effectiveness of NAGCAT in reducing childhood agricultural injury has not been assessed. We evaluated the effect of active dissemination of NAGCAT on the incidence of childhood agricultural injuries as well as several intermediate outcomes.
The intervention evaluated in this randomized controlled trial was active dissemination of NAGCAT to farms in central New York State beginning in January 2001. Lay educators with farming backgrounds visited intervention farms to review the guidelines. Control farms were visited only to complete the baseline survey. In the case of both control and intervention farms, farm visitors subjectively rated the participants level of concern about childhood agricultural injuries using a 5-point Likert scale.
The Intervention The core set of guidelines included a chart of recommended ages for tractor operation by size of tractor and task and guidelines on driving a farm tractor with no implement attached, working with large animals (e.g., horses, cattle), and operating farm equipment (e.g., barn cleaner, silo unloader). On farms where there were no animals, the core set included guidelines on operating tractors, hitching and unhitching trailed implements, and baling hay (dropping or throwing small square bales). At the conclusion of the visit, a parent resource booklet containing 52 guidelines (10 specialty production guidelines were excluded) was left with the intervention farm families. Several booster interventions followed these farm visits. In May 2001, a postcard with the NAGCAT logo and a safety message was mailed to intervention farms to remind families to use the guidelines during the high-risk summer season. In December 2001, a calendar depicting 12 NAGCAT jobs (produced by the Marshfield National Childrens Center) was mailed to intervention farms. Included in this mailing was a refrigerator magnetic photograph frame on which appeared the NAGCAT logo and Web address as well as a "Nag Cat" saying "Picture me doing the job safely."
Enrollment Mail and telephone listings obtained from the Bassett Research Institute, the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, and local farm media were used to identify farms in the 15-county study area. An advance notice describing the study was mailed to farms, followed by a phone call from study recruiters. In addition, farm families were personally recruited at agri-business shows, farm equipment open houses, and youth day camps. Advertisements were placed in mailings targeting the local farm population. Also, farm families enrolled in the study provided word-of-mouth referrals.
Surveillance
Injury Coding
Potential Cointerventions
Statistical Analyses We used Cox proportional hazards regression models to compare the intervention and control groups on time to first assignment of a task involving a NAGCAT age violation.11 We conducted these analyses separately for 16 specific NAGCAT jobs, including all of those from the core set (e.g., working with large animals, operating a tractor, and baling hay). The unit of analysis for these NAGCAT age violation models was the farm; the outcome was the time, in months, to first assignment of a NAGCAT task to the oldest working child below the recommended NAGCAT age for that task. The age cutoff used for a given task was the NAGCAT minimum supervision age for the task minus 2 years. The single exception was tractor use, for which the actual minimum age of 12 years was used. For example, age cutoffs were younger than 7 years for doing any tasks on the farm, younger than 12 years for hitching or unhitching trailed implements on a tractor and baling hay, and younger than 14 years for using all-terrain vehicles (ATVs). NAGCAT recommends a minimum age only within the tractor matrix, which covers all tractor jobs. For all other jobs, assessments must be made via the NAGCAT checklists; however, supervision is recommended on the basis of age ranges. Thus, we took the minimum age for supervision and subtracted 2 years to be conservative as well as to allow for developmental variation among children (being true to the intent of NAGCAT, which focuses on "developmentally appropriate work" rather than "age-appropriate work"). A farm was considered at risk for a given age violation outcome if at least 1 child was present who was too young to perform the task and had not yet performed it. Models were adjusted for child age at baseline, acres per child, and number of children older or younger than the index child, because these covariates were significantly related to outcomes at the univariate level. We also compared time to NAGCAT-preventable injuries between the intervention and control groups, at the farm level, using Cox proportional hazards regression. In this model, each farm was considered to have reached the endpoint at the time of the first injury to any child. We included all children workers so that we could detect spillover effects of the guidelines to children younger than 7 years and older than 16 years. The model also controlled, via covariance correction, for acres per child, average FTE per child, and percentage of children (019 years of age) currently employed on the farm. SAS (SAS Institute Inc, Cary, NC) was used in conducting all statistical analyses.
Intervention Implementation Farm visits began in January 2001 and ended in December 2001. The mean length of the intervention (review of NAGCAT) was 40 minutes (range: 590 minutes). During these sessions, the father was present at 55% of the control farms and 62% of the intervention farms; mothers were present at 51% of the control farms and 55% of the intervention farms; and both parents were present at 30% of the intervention farms and 27% of the control farms. Young people were rarely present (9% at the control farms and 18% at the intervention farms). Thirty-seven percent of the intervention farms required preintervention (i.e., review of fact sheets on childhood agricultural injuries).
Intervention and control farms were evenly distributed in the 15-county study area. At baseline, control and intervention farms were equivalent with respect to most demographic and farm variables (Table 1
Attrition The attrition rate was similar in the 2 study groups; 810 farms completed the study, representing 95.8% of our original sample. The leading reason for attrition (12.8%) was cessation of farming. Loss of a working telephone and departure of the respondent or children who lived or were employed on the farm accounted for 12% of attrition. The remaining attrition was attributed to reasons classified as "other" (e.g., worries about how the study might raise liability and insurance costs, fatigue over tracking working hours for children or answering surveillance calls, family conflict).
Injury Severity and Incidence A quarterly plot of overall childhood agricultural injury incidence density by study group showed no significant difference between the intervention and control farms. Also, there was no significant difference in mean cumulative injury incidence density per 100 FTEs (i.e., 0.55 in the control group vs 0.45 in the intervention group; P = .85). In the case of all age groups, mean cumulative incidence densities for strictly work-related injuries were 0.44 in the control group and 0.34 in the intervention group (P = .31). Children younger than 7 years had the highest injury incidence densities (1.36 per 100 FTEs in the control group and 1.27 per 100 FTEs in the intervention group), but the difference in this age group between the intervention and control farms was not statistically significant (P =.77). Control group children aged 7 to 16 years had a higher injury incidence density (0.63) than did their counterparts in the intervention group (0.50), but again the difference was not significant (P =.96).
NAGCAT-Related and NAGCAT-Preventable Injuries Among 7- to 19-year-olds, a 52% reduction in NAGCAT-preventable injury incidence densities was seen in the intervention group compared with the control group (0.07 vs 0.13); however, this finding did not achieve statistical significance (P = .68). Similarly, incidence densities of all NAGCAT-related injuries among 7- to 19-year-olds were higher in the control group (0.27) than in the intervention group (0.18), but again this result was not statistically significant (P = .46).
In the 0-to-19-year age group, there was a significant difference between the intervention and control farms in time to occurrence of a NAGCAT-preventable injury, and this difference favored the intervention farms (hazard ratio=0.52; 95% confidence interval [CI]= 0.29, 0.92; P=.03) (Figure 1
Changes on the Farm At quarter 6 (18 months after the farm visit), more respondents in the intervention group than in the control group (25% vs 16%) reported that they had set limits on the amount of time a child could perform work between breaks (intervention P<.01) and provided more supervision to children while they were performing work (42% vs 36%; P=.06). Most parents (61% in both study groups) reported having prevented their children from doing a particular job. There was no difference between the 2 groups in percentages adding a roll-over protection structure during the study period (intervention, 3.5%; control, 2.9%; P=.89) or adding or repairing a power takeoff (intervention, 25%; control, 24%; P=.76). Overall, intervention farms made more safety-related changes (mean=1.57) than did control farms (mean=1.39; P=.03).
Violations of NAGCAT Minimum Age Guidelines
Although all of the tasks included in the core set were tested, operating tractors, hitching/unhitching trailed implements, and baling hay were the only tasks that demonstrated differences between the intervention and control groups. Analyses of the remaining 12 tasks, including assessments of age violations among children aged younger than 7 years, revealed no differences between the groups.
Potential Cointerventions
This study demonstrates the efficacy of a single NAGCAT face-to-face educational encounter during a farm visit followed by modest intervention boosters. Active dissemination of these guidelines halved the incidence of NAGCAT-preventable injuries among 7- to 19-year-olds on intervention farms in comparison with control farms. In the 0-to-19-year age group, there was a significant increase in the time span to an occurrence of a NAGCAT-preventable injury in the intervention group compared with the control group. The guidelines also appeared to influence several important intermediate variables, such as setting limits for the amount of time a child does a task, providing more supervision, delaying initiation of ATV use, and making more safety-related changes on the farm. The success of NAGCAT in reducing work-related childhood agricultural injuries is an encouraging start, but these guidelines address only 1 source of such injuries. Because 50% of the childhood agricultural injuries recorded in our study were not NAGCAT related, it is not surprising that the guidelines did not significantly decrease the overall incidence of injuries. Rates of injury among children living or employed on farms are high, and such injuries occur not only while children are performing work but also while they are in the presence of others who are performing work (e.g., preschoolers accompanying their parents during farm work) or using the farm workplace for leisure activities. For example, in our study, the highest incidence of agricultural injuries was observed among children in the youngest age group (06 years), whose involvement in agricultural work is not recommended by NAGCAT. Preschool children require constant supervision in virtually all settings to prevent injuries.12,13 Agricultural settings are no exception; in fact, they may represent one of the most dangerous environments to which young children can be exposed.14,15 Delay in childrens use of ATVs on farms is an important intervention effect observed in this study. Increasing percentages of ATV-related injuries are requiring inpatient care, with hospitalization rates rising 79% between 1997 and 2000 among children younger than 19 years.16 Similar increases in hospitalizations for severe pediatric ATV-associated injuries have been documented in Ohio17 and Utah.18 Thus, delaying use of farm ATVs, whether for leisure or for work, may also be an important strategy for preventing ATV-related childhood injuries. Child safety on farms has typically been the responsibility of parents or farm operators. Farm children often begin tasks at younger ages and at lower levels of supervision than those recommended by NAGCAT. For example, 1 study showed that between 8.5% and 37% of children operating tractors are below the NAGCAT-recommended age levels.19 In addition, Pickett et al. found that, even after receipt of the guidelines, 26% of parents still assigned tractor jobs to their children in violation of NAGCAT.20 Some farm parents believe that earlier exposure to work leads to farm children being smarter, safer, more productive, less apt to be injured, and less in need of supervision than hired help.21 Thus, changing farm families beliefs regarding age of task initiation may help reduce work-related agricultural injuries. Although historically educational efforts alone have not been very effective in changing behaviors and decreasing injury rates in community-based injury prevention programs, the efficacy of NAGCAT in this study represents a promising initial strategy. Given the variety of possible sources of injury to children working or living on farms, childhood agricultural injury prevention efforts need to target a broader range of risk factors. Drawing from other examples in the literature, effective prevention efforts can range from active interventions that promote behavioral change to passive measures focusing on product design, engineering changes, or safety devices.22 As an example, legislative approaches have been somewhat successful in increasing the use of bicycle helmets; however, legislative measures have been resisted by farm families for years and will be difficult to enforce. Hazard reduction is another effective means of reducing rates of childhood injury, as demonstrated by the reductions in childhood injuries seen after environmental changes to playground surfaces and equipment.23 Expanding the array of injury prevention strategies is the next step in reducing childhood agricultural injuries.
This study was funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (grant RO1-OH04216). We are grateful to Barbara Marlenga and William Pickett for their consultation on the methods used in this study and their willingness to share their injury coding instrument and study questions. We also thank the National Childrens Center, Marshfield, Wis, and the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health for material and technical support. This studys success is the result of efforts by the educators, the enrollers, and our research staff: Nancy Weissflog, Nancy Peterson, Deborah Smith, and Nancy Christman. We gratefully acknowledge the input of the Parent Advisory Group. Finally, we thank the farm families for their participation.
Human Participant Protection
Peer Reviewed
Contributors Accepted for publication January 11, 2005.
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