Farmer Health eNews October 2020
Find out all the latest from the National Centre for Farmer Health
- Are you our next Scholarship recipient? HMF701 Scholarships are now OPEN!
- National Centre for Farmer Health new website launch
- Mental Health 4 Ag – Your time can make a big difference!
- Wellness Wednesday
Do you want to receive our eNews?
Directors Blog – Hearten up! Heart health matters
by Dr Susan Brumby
Twitter: @brumby_susan
Your heart is an amazing pump. Weighing in at 300 grams it pumps 6500 – 7000 litres per day[1]. Every day you expect your heart to beat 100,000 times without stopping 365 days of the year. We hope our hearts will continue to beat consistently for 80 – 90 years. This is a big ask and perhaps unsurprising that cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death with 21 people dying every day in Australia[2].
COVID-19 has not meant that heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular issues have stopped occurring, rather that people have put off getting treatment and seeking help. Many, many people have delayed or had to postpone cardiac specialist appointments because of COVID – 19. Whilst putting off appointments is understandable, a recent study undertaken during the COVID lockdown has shown the number of Victorian patients with severe chest pain attending hospital was reduced. Those that did attend were waiting much longer than usual to seek emergency medical treatment[3]. Time matters with heart attacks. In fact, every minute counts, because saving heart muscle depends on getting treatment quickly and early.
Unfortunately rural and remote people have higher levels of heart disease [4]. A study undertaken with Victorian farmers showed that even before COVID-19 farmers were likely to stay at home when they experienced chest pain, and paradoxically, the further they lived from an emergency department the longer they delayed seeking help [5]. Exactly the opposite of what you need to do. To save heart muscle you need to get assistance quickly.
People experiencing 10 minutes or more of chest pain should seek medical advice quickly. The further the distance from help the earlier you should seek assistance. That assistance /advice should be an emergency department with facilities to treat a heart attack – not a general practice clinic. Austin Health cardiologist Dr. Matias Yudi said during the COVID-19 lockdown, “We don’t yet know how many patients may have never presented at hospital or potentially died after having heart attacks,”. He noted that people who delayed treatment for heart attacks were at risk of other complications such as heart failure from the loss of heart muscle, fluid build-up in lungs and a decreased lifespan[6].
Rural and remote populations have shorter life expectancy than metropolitan populations. So make the time to research your family heart history, have a check-up with your GP and follow up on any appointments that you had.
Remember: If you have chest pain lasting more than 10 minutes and are delaying seeking help, think about your heart and the job it does for you every single day and call triple zero (000).
References
- Aird, W.C., Spatial and temporal dynamics of the endothelium. Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, 2005. 3(7): p. 1392-1406.
- Heart Foundation. What is a heart attack? 2020 13 September]; Available from: https://www.heartfoundation.org.au/conditions/heart-attack.
- Toner, L., et al., Acute coronary syndromes undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention in the COVID-19 era: comparable case volumes but delayed symptom onset to hospital presentation. European Heart Journal – Quality of Care and Clinical Outcomes, 2020. 6(3): p. 225-226.
- Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, Rural and Remote Health. Cat.no PHE 255. 2019, AIHW: Canberra.
- Baker, T., et al., Farmers with acute chest pain are uncertain how and when to seek help: A pilot study. Emergency Medicine Australasia, 2011. 23(3).
- Melissa Cunningham and Aisha Dow, ‘Huge concern:’ Heart attack patients risk lives by delaying hospital treatment, in The Age. 2020, Nine: Melbourne.
Does 20-Minute Rounding Reduce Falls in an Aged-Care Setting? A Pilot Intervention Study.
Highlights
- The study investigated if 20-min rounding reduced falls in aged-care facilities.
- Overall, falls were reduced for residents of the aged-care facilities.
- No severe falls occurred during the intervention period.
- This is compared to three in the previous six months.
- There were no differences in falls for the intervention group.
2020|09|08: Free telehealth consultation for farmers – The South Gippsland Sentinel-Times
Farmer Health eNews September 2020
Find out all the latest from the National Centre for Farmer Health
- Online Events in September
- Cuppa with the Women of the NCFH to celebrate Women’s Health Week
- South Gippsland Cows in a Cloud Dairy Expo – book your free online health check
- #SnapshotRuralVic Campaign is gaining momentum – check the latest entries
- Mental Health 4 Ag – new mental health project needs your involvement
- Wellness Wednesday
Do you want to receive our eNews?
Directors Blog – Farmer Health Matters: Heads up with mask wearing
A recent paper indicated that whilst handwashing and social distancing are appropriate, they are insufficient to provide protection from virus-carrying respiratory micro droplets released into the air by infected people.(1)
From midnight on August 2, regional Victorians were required to wear face masks—including farmers. For many farmers, home is also their workplace and therefore must wear a mask if they have staff coming and going from the farm property. When you live and work in a family environment that is important because if you pick up COVID-19 from someone visiting the farm, you are very likely to take it into your home and infect your family. Even if visitors or staff feel well the viral load peaks in the day before symptoms of COVID-19 begin and just speaking is enough to expel virus-carrying droplets that can infect you, your family and staff.(2)
It’s pretty easy to understand why wearing a mask helps provide protection if you do the maths. An average person takes 23040 breaths per day, breathing in around 11000 litres of air. Think of an 11000 litre water tank. With each breath we inhale and exhale hundreds of biological particles, which include pollen, animal and human dander, plant debris, bacteria, and viruses. The smallest of these are viruses of up to 0.1 micron in size which is 200 times finer than your 20 micron wool. A recent experiment using high-speed video found hundreds of droplets were generated when saying a simple phrase, but that nearly all these droplets were blocked when the mouth was covered.(3)
This simple demonstration by Rich Davis, a Clinical Microbiology Lab Director(4) shows the effect of wearing a mask and not wearing a mask on bacterial spread (not viral spread) when sneezing, talking and coughing. He did this using bacterial culture plates.
Figure 1: Effect of wearing a mask and not wearing a mask on bacterial spread
According to Mr Davis ‘It is likely that smaller aerosolized droplets ( that could carry viruses like COVID-19) are also produced during coughing and sneezing and that these would travel further and stay in the air longer than larger droplets’. Masks can help stop someone who has an infection -and doesn’t know it – from passing it on and can also help prevent you getting sick.
For those Australians (not in Victoria) the World Health Organisation is now recommending face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19(5) and as outbreaks and second and third waves occur being prepared. Our experience in Victoria is that when you need them (masks) you need them and having ready made or stocks of disposable masks on hand is a good idea. Stores ran out of masks for sale and elastic for mask making had length limits in place. As farms are getting into their busy season- lamb marking, calving, silage making, shearing, harvesting, mango season and selling stock- it is important that we don’t see a rise in COVID- 19 resulting in further lockdowns.
Wearing a mask can do more than just filter air, it can also help with social distancing through how we perceive others and how willing we are to get to close to strangers.(6) It is also great to see the VFF promoting #Masksonfarms on twitter – do check it out.
Remember: Wearing a clean mask every time you leave your house makes good sense. There are lots of mask patterns available online but make sure they cover both your nose and mouth and have 3 layers.(7)
References:
- Lidia Morawska, Donald K Milton, (2020) It is Time to Address Airborne Transmission of COVID-19, Clinical Infectious Diseases, , ciaa939, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa939
- Jayaweera, M., H. Perera, B. Gunawardana and J. Manatunge (2020). “Transmission of COVID-19 virus by droplets and aerosols: A critical review on the unresolved dichotomy.” Environmental research 188: 109819-109819.
- Anfinrud, P., V. Stadnytskyi, C. E. Bax and A. Bax (2020). “Visualizing Speech-Generated Oral Fluid Droplets with Laser Light Scattering.” New England Journal of Medicine 382(21): 2061-2063.
- Rich Davis, (2020) PhD https://twitter.com/richdavisphd/status/1276737371464060928
- WHO (2020, 5 June) Advice on the use of masks in the context of COVID-19: Interim guidance.
- Massimo Marchiori, (2020) COVID-19 and the Social Distancing Paradox: dangers and solutions. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.12446.pdf
- DHHS (2020) Key Points, Hygiene and physical distancing. DHHS Vic https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/staying-safe-covid-19
Farmer Health eNews August 2020
Find out all the latest from the National Centre for Farmer Health
- #SnapshotRuralVic – get involved!
- Farm Safety Week wrap up
- New Working Group expressions of interest; co-designing a peer-supported approach to improve mental health in rural farming communities
- Wellness Wednesday
Do you want to receive our eNews?
2020-06-15: Working together with a shared understanding: growing workforce putting farmer health in the spotlight – Partyline
Despite continued higher rates of workplace injuries, earlier morbidity and mortality and challenging climatic environments, few formal programs focus on the health, wellbeing and safety of farmers. In the farming context, culturally competent professionals have a greater understanding of the unique hazards and conditions farmers face and therefore be able to obtain more detailed histories, make better diagnosis and provide more appropriate treatments, interventions and discharge plans.
This notion extends beyond health workers to professionals working in agricultural communities and in policy development. Deakin University’s Agricultural Health and Medicine unit, developed in 2010, developed to increase cultural competence and empower rural professionals to improve the health, wellbeing and safety outcomes of farming populations in Australia.
“Our workforce across Australia continues to grow as more and more health professionals complete their Graduate Certificate in Agricultural Health and Medicine,” said National Centre for Farmer Health Business Development and Industry Engagement Manager, Cecilia Fitzgerald.
“This, coupled with dynamic and effective collaborations with our industry partners, means together we are able to engage with rural communities, increasing their health literacy and make a real difference”.
Partnerships and collaborations reinforce the understanding that to engage rural communities and change the culture surrounding taking care of your health, wellbeing and safety requires consistent messages shared and spread by both the health and agricultural industries working together.
Throughout 2019, the Murrumbidgee Primary Health Network (MPHN), through the Australian Government’s ‘Empowering our Communities’ initiative, partnered with the National Centre for Farmer Health to deliver Health and Lifestyle Assessments to people impacted by drought across the Murrumbidgee region.
MPHN was one of nine Primary Health Networks to be funded under the Empowering our Communities initiative to provide additional mental health support to help farmers and rural communities to deal with the uncertainty, stress and anxiety of drought conditions.
“It was important to engage with activities that help build community capacity and foster long-term resilience,” said MPHN Chief Executive Officer Melissa Neal.
“Offering free health check-ups through the NCFH is one way people living in drought affected communities can engage in a fairly neutral and private way with a health professional and receive a specialized assessment of their general and mental health.”
The success of these collaborations comes as a result of the understanding that to engage communities and change the culture surrounding taking care of your health, wellbeing and safety requires consistent messages shared and spread by both the health and agricultural industries working together.
National Centre for Farmer Health Agrihealth professional, RN, and Agicultural Health and Medicine graduate, Amelia Cottrell from NSW is one of a team of nurses using their expert understanding of Agricultural Health to conduct the health checks across the country.
“The National Centre for Farmer Health has helped me fulfil my passion to improve the health and wellbeing of rural communities through conducting HLA’s and educating participants of the health risks associated with the Agricultural industry and to make a positive change to farmers lives,” said Amelia.
Fellow graduate, RN and farmer, Jeanne Van Der Geest Dekker from Victoria also understands the importance of effective engagement of communities in their health, wellbeing and safety.
“Coping with stress on farm has its unique challenges,” she said.
“It’s often isolating with many factors affecting stress on farm – for example drought, fire, floods and economic downturn. Many have survived years of persistent stress but having an awareness of stress and how it manifests into physical, emotional and behavioural symptoms is key to dealing with stress. It’s about finding the balance.”
Victorian farmer Logan Symes received a health check in 2019, afterwards saying: “If I didn’t get a free health check from you guys, I wouldn’t have discovered that I had type one diabetes at an early stage”.
To learn more about the Graduate Certificate of Agricultural Health and Medicine and our partnerships and how to apply for July 2020 commencement visit www.farmerhealth.org.au.
View article: 2020-06-15: Working together with a shared understanding: growing workforce putting farmer health in the spotlight – Partyline
Looking after your most important asset, your mind – Podcast: Safe Ag Systems
Eight Australians die every day by suicide. 75% of these people are male and people in rural populations are 2 times more likely to die by suicide. So why is there over 65,000 Australians attempting suicide each year and is there anything that can be done about it?
Kirby Richmond-Davis from Safe Ag Systems caught up with Al Gabb for Farm Safety Week to have a conversation about his experience.
2020-07-20: Farmer health is better with specialist Ag health and medicine support – Press Release: Deakin University
New research shows Australian farming communities enjoy better health outcomes when university health graduates understand the specific challenges faced by people living and working on the land.
National Centre for Farmer Health Research Assistant, Jessie Adams, said the study found doctors, nurses, health professionals and agricultural students who graduated from Deakin Agricultural Health and Medicine courses felt significantly better equipped to work in farming populations.
“76 per cent of graduates from the Agricultural Health and Medicine unit felt their ability to diagnose, treat and prevent agricultural occupational illness or injury in farmers had improved,” Ms Adams said.
“Furthermore, 42 per cent of the Agricultural Health and Medicine alumni said they use the specialist skills gained from the unit in their professional lives on a weekly basis. Both these results strongly suggest there’s a real benefit to farmer health when specialist learning is applied to take account of the unique values and experiences of farming communities.”
The field of agricultural health and medicine looks at occupational and environmental health; aiming to reduce injuries and illnesses within farming populations by developing students’ ‘cultural competence’.
National Centre for Farmer Heath Director, Professor Susan Brumby, introduced the specialist unit to Deakin students back in 2010.
“From research, I saw a need for a specialist course that could increase cultural competence and empower medical professionals to improve the health, wellbeing and safety outcomes of farming populations in Australia,” she said.
“Farmers and agricultural workers want to engage with health care services that truly understand the unique culture and risks associated with farming work. They also require services to be personally relevant and engaging, so that they feel comfortable.
“Another significant hurdle remains the culture of stoicism and lack of confidence in health professionals held by farmers, exacerbated if they think the professional they are seeing isn’t from a farming background. Too often this leads to farmers not engaging regularly with health services, instead, leaving health and wellbeing issues until they are unable to function adequately.”
Professor Brumby says Australian farmers remain over-represented in workplace injuries and fatalities and experience some earlier disease within challenging climatic environments, compared to other workers.
“But despite all this, there’s few formal programs in Australia that adequately focus on the health, wellbeing and safety of farmers to combat these problems,” Professor Brumby said.
“Deakin’s Agricultural Health and Medicine unit highlights at-risk populations through covering the distinct characteristics and higher rates of chronic disease associated with farming. Agricultural respiratory diseases, skin diseases, some cancers, zoonotic disease, mental health, traumatic farm injury, pesticide exposure and musculoskeletal disorders are all covered by graduates challenged to consider these major influences on agricultural life today and into the future.”
With National Farm Safety Week beginning today, Professor Brumby said Ms Adams’ research highlights the need for further investment in specialised training relating to agricultural community health.
“The benefits are twofold: health care professionals more confident in dealing with farmers and recognising problems, and farmers are more likely to seek out assistance in the first place for better health outcomes,” Professor Brumby said.
“It’s really pleasing to see this study finding that graduates have taken the skills they learnt at Deakin and identified barriers and enablers facing health professionals and farmers and agricultural workers in seeking healthcare and medical support, but there’s still a long way to go and this is a great time to have that conversation.”
View Publication: CLICK HERE
Read on Deakin website: CLICK HERE
Mallee Sustainable Farming Podcast 4 – Child Safety on farm
LOOKING AFTER YOUR MOST IMPORTANT FARM ASSET – New Podcast Episode out now!
We’re shining a light on PPE and why it is SO important in your day to day farming operations.
In this episode we’re talking about Child Safety on Farms!
Welcome to our episode guest speaker, Jacquie Cotton (National Centre for Farmer Health).
We discuss:
Where to start when it comes to discussing child safety on your farm.
Practical safety ideas
School Holiday farm fun – how to approach child safety topics with your family, friends and community.
Handy resources:
https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/your-industry/agriculture,-forestry-and-fishing/farming/child-safety-on-farms
https://www.vff.org.au/policy/farm-safety/
View more podcasts on the MSF website
Directors Blog – Farmer Health Matters and Farm Safety Week
by Dr Susan Brumby
Twitter: @brumby_susan
Across Australia 27% of all workplace fatalities occur in the agriculture, forestry and fishing industries and yet they make up less than 3% of the total workforce(1). Despite a variety of programs to address this tragedy, the rate has not changed significantly over the last decade despite substantial improvements being made in other occupations such as mining and construction.
But it’s not just higher rates of workplace deaths. Shorter life expectancy and poor health outcomes compared to metropolitan populations appear an accepted risk of rural and agricultural life. Research suggests higher rates of preventable conditions such as cardiovascular disease, injury, diabetes, suicide, loss of hearing, some cancers and less access to services as the cause for shorter life expectancy(2).
Is farmer health a new problem?
This isn’t a new problem. Farmer health was an issue when the father of Occupational Medicine, Bernardino Ramazzini wrote his seminal work Diseases in Workers back in 1713(3). Few programs— nationally or globally —focus exclusively on the health, wellbeing and safety of farmers. The national Safe Work and state based WorkSafe organisations recognise agriculture as a high priority sector focusing on prevention of workplace fatalities and injuries. Various mental health organisations have a specific focus on rural/farming communities, particularly males where suicides remain high. There are also initiatives that focus on building the social capacity and resilience of rural and regional communities and government incentives to attract medical staff to our rural and regional areas. All of these are aiming to address the health, wellbeing and safety of farmers and agricultural workers.
Walking in their shoes
Farming men and women trust health and rural professionals who know farming realities and the type of workplace that farms are. Numerous studies have reported this. Being able to empathise and engage with farmers and agricultural workers is easier when you have walked in their shoes.
Farm Safety Week across the globe | 20-25 July 2020
This week is Farm Safety Week. Over the next 5 weeks I am going to release a weekly infographic on a farmer health matter that we believe is important.
Our hope at the National Centre for Farmer Health is that farmers and rural and health professionals find the infographics a handy reminder to always consider farmer health and not just during farm safety week.
References:
- SAFE WORK AUSTRALIA 2019. Work-related Traumatic Injury Fatalities, Australia 2018. Canberra: Safe Work Australia
- AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF HEALTH AND WELFARE 2019. Rural & remote health. Cat. no. PHE 255 Canberra: AIHW.
- RAMAZZINI, B. 1949. De Morbis Artificum Bernardini Ramazzini Diatriba (The diseases of workers). The Latin text of 1713 revised, with translation and notes by Wilmer Cave Wright. The History of Medicine Series. Chicago:: University of Chicago Press issued under the auspices of the Library of the New York Academy of Medicine.