Parent perspectives on the benefits and risks of child-livestock interactions.

Growing up on a farm or ranch often involves interactions with livestock that present both potential risks and benefits to children. While these "child-livestock interactions" contribute to the burden of agriculturally related injuries to youth in the United States, they may also result in improved immunological health and other benefits. Agricultural upbringings are also widely perceived to improve physical, cognitive, and skill development of children, contributing to a combination of potential benefits and risks known as the "farm kid paradox.

Regional surveillance of medically-attended farm-related injuries in children and adolescents.

Purpose: Due to numerous environmental hazards such as heavy machinery and large livestock, youth who live and work on farms are at high risk of injury, disability, and death. This study described a regional surveillance system for monitoring farm-related injuries in children and adolescents. As the risk of farm-related injuries are not exclusive to farm residents, trends in farm-related injuries over the previous 5 years were reported and compared between children/adolescents who did and did not live on farms in north-central Wisconsin.

Agricultural youth injuries: An updated review of cases from U.S. news media reports, 2016-2021.

Introduction: Fatal and non-fatal youth (ages 0-17) injuries in U.S. agriculture continue to be a significant public health concern.

Childcare for farm families: A key strategy to keep children safe yet largely absent from farm programming.

Despite long-standing safety recommendations that non-working children be supervised off the worksite by an adult, little is known about farm families' ability to comply. We conducted a review of 92 documents and 36 key informant interviews in three U.S.

Structural Competency and Agricultural Health and Safety: An Opportunity to Foster Equity within Agriculture.

The future of agricultural work in the United States (U.S.) must account for at least two important trends: 1) the persistence of the industry being riddled with high rates of injury and illness and 2) the growing proportion of hired farmworkers compared to family farmworkers working in these dangerous environments.

COVID-19 vaccine coverage disparities in rural and farm children.

Background: The risks of severe outcomes associated with SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) are elevated in unvaccinated individuals. It remains crucial to understand patterns of COVID-19 vaccination, particularly in younger and remote populations where coverage often lags. This study examined disparities in COVID-19 vaccine coverage in farm children and adolescents.

Labor Shortage Poses Safety Challenges for Growing Agritourism Industry.

Trends: Agritourism is increasingly popular, generating the need for additional employees. Given the labor shortages in the U.S.

Thinking the Future of Agricultural Worker Health on a Warming Planet and an Automating Farm.

Over the last 20 years, earth's increasing surface temperature has dramatically altered local climates and risks associated with agricultural work. In parallel, increasing automation has continued to be a hallmark of innovation in agriculture, promising to lower the economic and health externalities of labor in food production by reducing worker demand and hazardous exposure. However, many of these automations neither eliminate labor nor ameliorate climate change pressures on farms.

Cord blood sphingolipids are associated with atopic dermatitis and wheeze in the first year of life.

Background: Allergen-sensitized pregnant mice have increased plasma levels of the lipids β-glucosylceramides (βGlcCers) that are transplacentally transferred to the fetus, increased subsets of proinflammatory dendritic cells in the fetal liver and pup lung, and increased allergen-induced offspring lung inflammation.

Objective: Our aim was to determine whether these preclinical observations extend to a human association of βGlcCers with wheeze and allergic disease in the prospective Wisconsin Infant Study Cohort.

Methods: We measured 74 lipids in cord blood plasma by using mass spectrometry detection of sphingolipids, eicosanoids, and docosinoids, as well as an ELISA for 13-hydroxyoctadecadienoic acid.

Medical economic vulnerability: a next step in expanding the farm resilience scholarship.

In recent years, the long-standing questions of why, how, and which farm families continue farming in the face of ongoing changes have increasingly been studied through the resilience lens. While this body of work is providing updated and novel insights, two limitations, a focus on macro-level challenges faced by the farm operation and a mismatch between the scale of challenges and resilience measures, likely limit our understanding of the factors at play. We use the example of medical economic vulnerability, a micro-level challenge traditionally confined to the household sphere of the agri-family system, as a way to call attention to these limitations.

Children, Work, and Safety on the Farm during COVID-19: A Harder Juggling Act.

Objectives: Measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the Spring of 2020 immediately raised concerns among farm safety experts about the increase in children's risk exposure due to changes in childcare and schooling arrangements. The goal of this study is to understand how farm parents were taking care of their children in the early months of COVID-19.

Methods: I conducted univariate and inductive content analysis on survey data from 134 farm parents from 38 U.

What about the Rest of Them? Fatal Injuries Related to Production Agriculture Not Captured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI).

Surveillance of injuries in production agriculture is necessary to inform stakeholders about workplace hazards and risks in order to improve and advance injury prevention policies and practices for this dangerous industry. The most comprehensive fatal injury surveillance effort currently in the United States is the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), which covers occupational fatalities in all U.S.

Broadening Our Understanding of Farm Children's Risk Exposure by Considering Their Parents' Farming Background.

While farm safety researchers have seldom considered the association between farm parents' background and their children's safety, researchers who have compared first- and multi-generation farmers have found differences that may shape safety outcomes. We draw on the farm safety and family farm bodies of literature and a survey of 203 United States farm parents to assess the role of farming background in farm children risk exposure. Exploratory in nature, the bivariate analysis revealed no statistically significant differences between first- and multi-generation farmers in children injury, agricultural safety perceptions, knowledge, and practices but revealed differences in key demographic characteristics and parenting styles.

Abstracts from the Virtual 2021 North American Agricultural Safety Summit.

The Journal of Agromedicine is pleased to share the following 26 abstracts accepted for poster presentations and lightning talks at the 2021 North American Agricultural Safety Summit. The host organization, Agricultural Safety and Health Council of America (ASHCA) convened leaders in agribusiness and safety research March 22-24 for an online forum honoring safety innovators and sharing evidence-based safety interventions. The summit drew risk managers, educators, government officials and others interested in improving worker safety in one of the nation's most hazardous industries.

Facebook Ads Manager as a Recruitment Tool for a Health and Safety Survey of Farm Mothers: Pilot Study.

Background: Social media platforms have experienced unprecedented levels of growth and usage over the past decade, with Facebook hosting 2.7 billion active users worldwide, including over 200 million users in the United States. Facebook users have been underutilized and understudied by the academic community as a resource for participant recruitment.

Farmer Mental Health in the US Midwest: Key Informant Perspectives.

In this study, we seek to illuminate: (1) the ways farm service providers and mental health professionals understand the drivers of farm stress, (2) the strategies, challenges, and opportunities farm service providers and mental health professionals identify for supporting the mental health needs of farm families, and; (3) opportunities for future research and outreach to improve the mental health of farmers in the U.S. Midwest region.

Coding agricultural injury: Factors affecting coder agreement.

Objectives: To determine coders' agreement level for the Occupational Injury and Illness Classification System (OIICS) source of injury and injury event codes, and the Farm and Agricultural Injury Classification (FAIC) code in the AgInjuryNews.org and to determine the effects of supplemental information and follow-up discussion in final code assignments.

Methods: Two independent researchers initially coded 1304 injury cases from AgInjurynews.

Health Care and Health Insurance Access for Farm Families in the United States during COVID-19: Essential Workers without Essential Resources?

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, farmers and farm workers have been deemed essential workers across the world. Yet, despite working in one of the most dangerous occupations, and despite being especially vulnerable to the virus (due to existing health risk factors and risk of infection stemming from difficulties adopting control measures), many farmers and farm workers in the United States have long lacked essential resources to ensure they can meet their health needs: affordable and accessible health insurance and health care. In this commentary, we draw on our own research focused on farm families and collective experiences to discuss three main challenges farm families have faced meeting their health needs: reliance on off-farm work for health insurance coverage, the need to forecast income when purchasing a plan on the health insurance marketplace, and barriers to health care in rural areas.

Rural Telehealth Use during the COVID-19 Pandemic: How Long-term Infrastructure Commitment May Support Rural Health Care Systems Resilience.

Amid concerns of inadequate medical supplies and staffing anticipated from a surge in COVID-19 cases, many health care systems across the United States (U.S.) began shutting down non-essential patient services in March 2020.

Finding the Edges of Problems: Social Media as an Exploratory Research Tool.

Social media use in public health and other health related research applications has seen a rapid increase in recent years. However, there has been very limited utilization of this growing digital sector in agricultural injury research. Social media offers immense potential in gathering informal data, both text and images, converting them into knowledge, which can open up avenues for research, policy, and practice.