2012-06-18 SFF strikes gold in major evaluation

The Sustainable Farm Families program is not just saving agricultural families and workers; it is proving a feather in the cap of the Hamilton-based National Centre for Farmer Health (NCFH).

A Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation evaluation has assessed SFF as its most successful package within the current project framework.

RIRDC Managing Director, Craig Burns says the evaluations aim at selecting the most effective to undertake research and development and research application activities to improve the:

• Physical health of farming and fishing workers and their families,

• Mental health of farming and fishing families, and

• The safety of the work environment and practices in farming and fishing industries.

One of the three programs selected for assessment in 2011 was the Farming and Fishing Health and Safety Program.

Mr Burns says a part of each specific program review is to select randomly three independent investments within the program for an impact evaluation through cost benefit analysis.

He says the three economic analyses provide specific case studies that will demonstrate the extent and distribution of benefits that “have been, are being, or will be, captured in the future”.

“Another purpose of the economic analyses is to contribute to a process being undertaken for the Council of Rural Research and Development Corporations which aims to demonstrate through outcomes and benefits which have emerged, or are likely to emerge, from the 15 Rural Research and Development Corporations (RDCs),” he says.

“The projects evaluated demonstrated predominantly economic and social benefits, a number of which were quantified in value terms.”

“The investment in Sustainable Farm Families – Future Directions has contributed to demonstrating the impact of the SFF approach to improving health and safety on farms.”

This will in turn contribute to continued funding of the program, and continued interest in the program by farming families.

“The benefits from the project have been estimated by valuing the improvements in health for those participants who would not have been a part of the future SFF program if the Future Directions project had not been undertaken.”

NCFH Acting Director, Cate Mercer-Grant says the evaluation demonstrated that SFF had:

• Saved health costs for future additional participants and their families.

• Saved long-term public health costs due to preventative health, wellbeing and safety measures taken by additional future participants.

• Saved health costs for participants in the Future Directions project due to reinforcement of messages from earlier SFF participation.

Ms Mercer-Grant adds the evaluation showed improved health, safety and wellbeing of future additional participants and their families who will participate in SFF due to evidence provided by the Future Directions project.

She says there will also be improved health, safety and wellbeing for participants in the Future Directions project due to reinforcement of messages from earlier SFF participation.

“It is a demonstration of the quality of the programs NCFH chooses to present, and the level of professionalism of our staff doing the work at the coalface,” she says.

“To get the highest rating of the programs evaluated as part of RIRDC’s ongoing assessment of the money it and other investors sink into operations such as NCFH and the products and services we provide sends a clear message.”

“The information and courses we deliver are cutting edge and have tangible positive, long-term impacts in agricultural communities, which is what we are all about.”

Ms Mercer-Grant says from SFF to its HMF701 Agricultural Health and Medicine unit offered in partnership with the School of Medicine at Deakin University to its annual conference, being held in September, NCFH is all about its core mission.

A mission she says is to better equip agricultural communities, and the people who support them, with the skills for better health, safety and wellbeing.

“We are delighted with the success of the SFF evaluation and believe it reflects strongly on the quality of everything the team at NCFH does,” she says.

“It is a professionalism matched with extraordinary commitment and is an honour rightfully shared by everyone here.”

Further details are available from the National Centre for Farmer Health website www.farmerhealth.org.au

or phone 03 5551 8533

2012-06-26 Farming – dangerous or deadly? Research will tell

Twenty-six Western Victorian farms will provide the blueprint for measuring the true dangers in running a modern cropping enterprise.

A SafeWork project being run by New Zealand’s Massey University and Hamilton-based National Centre for Farmer Health will examine and measure exposures in a farming environment.

NCFH Acting Director, Cate Mercer-Grant says the National Centre for Farmer Health has recently done some pioneering on-farm work in hearing, using state-of-the-art equipment to measure virtually every part of a farmer’s day on the job.

And says the opportunity to partner Massey University will be an “exciting next stage” in delivering quality support services to farming families, not just in Victoria but around Australia.

“This is what NCFH is all about – from its management of the Sustainable Farm Families program to the presentation of products such as agri-health courses in conjunction with Deakin University,” Cate Mercer-Grant says.

“There is a lot of synergy between the work we do and the development of this holistic approach to assessing the potential risks for the agricultural community,” she says.

“It is absolutely essential, and overdue, work and NCFH, in its leadership position in looking after the health, safety and wellbeing of farming families is the perfect fit for the job.”

“I am very pleased that Massey University has contracted the NCFH to undertake this project at an important time during the centre’s short history and we look forward to working with their staff “she said.

Project principal investigator Mark Wagstaffe says the research is aiming to determine the level of exposure to hazards – from dust and noise to UV rays and chemicals.

Mark says testing will be run in real time – “capturing exposure data every minute” – with results being automatically downloaded to a laptop with matching video.

“We aim to determine if these exposures can lead to adverse health effects,” Mark says.

“Testing for these exposures will be carried out by trained and highly experienced health professionals,” he says.

“As there are a number of pathways for chemical exposures for example, by breathing them in or direct contact, we will be using dermal patches to get an exact outcome of the effects of herbicide and insecticide chemicals.”

While neither the researchers or farmers can control the seasons in which they work, Mark says getting an accurate picture of the role UVA and UVB, as well as temperature, plays in the lives of farmers, their families and farm workers is vital.

“We will also be looking for common peaks of exposure, for example, where we may be able to come up with low-cost intervention which will have some positive long-term outcomes,” he adds.

“While there has been work done in most of these areas, nothing has been done in combination, and in real time, so this will be incredibly valuable research once it is all put together and our report is written.

“The team at Massey have been doing this type of work in a variety of industries, and some of them, such as wood dust in the timber industry and fumigants in containers shipping, have a lot of important parallels,” Mark says.

“The chance for us to work alongside the team at NCFH is also a plus because these people have done some cutting-edge work across the agricultural and rural communities and their input will be invaluable.”

The report and its recommendations are to be delivered to SafeWork by May 31 next year.

Photo (attached):  L to R Western District Health Service CEO Jim Fletcher  with Tiz Harding and Mark Wagstaffe Centre for Public Health Research, Massey University

Further details are available from Cate Mercer-Grant, National Centre for Farmer Health, on (03) 5551 8533 and Mark Wagstaffe, Massey University, on 64-4-801-5799 or email M.Wagstaffe@massey.ac.nz

2012-03-23 Shhh! This is one message you simply have to hear

It might not sound like much compared with climate and the dollar, but hearing loss is a major problem on Australian farms.

However someone is listening to farmers and taking steps to do something about it.

With funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Hamilton-based National Centre for Farmer Health is undertaking a research program over 28 months in Victoria and Queensland. This program will have researchers armed with integrated sound level meters tracking farmers of every discipline to pin down the decibel damage within their farming operation.

Surprisingly, while the research team has been in training, apart from impulse noises such as a nail gun at 140dB, the worst offender at an eardrum-shattering 98.1 dB has been an auctioneer in the Hamilton saleyards. Research assistant Heidi Mason says 85dB is the recommended maximum noise level. So if farmers are being exposed to sustained noise anywhere near, or above, that level they are at a real risk of long-term, even permanent, hearing damage.

A Saturn rocket generates 195dB at launch and artillery can only muster 140dB.

“The program is called Shhh hearing in a farming environment and we started with training in February,” Heidi says.

“Our team is NCFH director Sue Brumby, Cate Mercer-Grant, Warwick Williams from the National Acoustics Laboratory and Anthony Hogan from Australian National University and me,” she says.

“In training we completed noise audits on a sheep farm at Vasey (most noise from the elbow of a shearing down-tube), beef enterprise at Dunkeld (cattle in crush) and a dairy at Byaduk (putting on suction cups).

Now Shhh hearing in a farming environment will be rolling the program out offering farmers from Sustainable Farm Families programs the opportunity to participate.

Heidi says they are focusing on farmers who believe they may have some difficulty in hearing and will be covering a variety of industries from cropping, dairy, livestock and remote pastoral enterprises.

For farmers the program offers them the opportunity to have a farm noise audit done and check the levels of some of their machinery, as well as offer practical advice on hearing protection available, consequently preventing further hearing damage.

What the farmers say:

Farmers involved in hearing trials with the Shhh hearing in a farming environment program have got the message loud and clear. This is an area where people’s health is at risk. Two of the participants say they know plenty of farmers with hearing aids – or ones who don’t, but should. And both admit being surprised by their own unexpected exposure to noise they had never noticed or considered.

Edward Blackwell

Dunkeld
Beef and sheep enterprise

Edward Blackwell is a fourth-generation farmer running a beef and sheep operation who has always been conscious of noise.

“I wear ear muffs when I use a chain saw, or in the workshop, but never really gave a thought to something as routine a yard work,” Edward says.

“Yet the noise spikes really amazed me, particularly around the cattle crush when I was shown the figures,” he says.

“I am only 30 and while I don’t have any hearing problems I will be more aware of these things now.

“It really is surprising how much noise you are subject to out in the open that you just don’t think about. I have no doubt this research will be of benefit to farmers in the long run.”

Paddy Fenton

Vasey
Wool and prime lambs

Paddy Fenton says he and Bronnie already have a strong safety focus on every aspect of their farm, right down to having installed a left-hand stand in his shearing shed.

He says while it might never be used, it is there to make for an easier drag if he ever does get a left-handed shearer.

“The sound tests the team did here covered everything – from our dogs to music, handpieces, the press and even sweeping the floor,” Paddy says.

“The only thing they didn’t record was me swearing at the crossbreds when trying to get them penned,” he says.

While the 51-year-old third-generation farmer says his hearing is fine, he says those with reduced faculties must face challenges on the farm.

He says that goes from simple things such as missing a call for black wool (not that he has any in his Merino flock) to the more dangerous risk of machinery.

“I do know some shearers who wear ear plugs but then they simply turn the music up louder, so everyone has to suffer so knowing where the hearing problems are will be valuable.”

Further details are available from Cate Mercer-Grant (03) 5551 8533 

2010-10-12 Farmer health pioneer proves health is most important harvest

Health and safety need to be seen as a crucial part of farming’s bottom line if the industry is to progress, a world expert told delegates at the National Centre for Farmer Health conference in Hamilton.

Professor Kelley Donham said while producers know all about raising crops and breeding livestock, they have never grasped the ‘need to farm health and safety’. He said farmers are too prepared to assume health issues and physical risks are part and parcel of their business – ‘and they are not’.

Professor Donham, who is with the College of Public Health at the University of Iowa, developed the first, and one of the few, didactic teaching programs today in agricultural medicine. It provides specialty training for health care professionals, occupational health professionals, and veterinarians in occupational and environmental health agricultural communities.

A blueprint for the Hamilton-based National Centre for Farmer Health (NCFH), his AgriSafe Network, a group of specialty clinics which deal with the occupational and environmental health issues of farm families and workers in their communities, has spread from one centre to a network across 17 states in the US.

Professor Donham speaks with hands-on experience, as he still owns and operates a farm.
His research has focused on diseases of agricultural workers, particularly respiratory diseases, zoonotic infectious diseases, and intervention methods of prevention.

‘One of the inherent risks for people in regional and rural areas is delayed, or misdiagnosed, intervention in illness,’ Professor Donham said.

‘The traditional healthcare system provides little to zero training in agriculture issues,’ he said.
‘A producer comes in and presents with symptoms which the health provider simply does not, and cannot, recognise.

‘That is compounded by the farmer’s inherent sense of self-reliance, and reluctance to go into detail about their problems, particularly men.’

Professor Donham said once producers took the step to recognise their health and wellbeing as a value-added product on the farm, many of the current problems go away.

He said farmers can worry about a single harvest, or sheep sale, but if they lose their health the result can be the loss of the farm.

‘When you look at it that way, people suddenly grasp their true worth,’ he said.

‘The culture of agriculture means change has to be built into the system, we have to farm and raise the profile of healthcare.’

NCFH director Sue Brumby said Professor Donham struck a genuine chord with conference delegates.

She said to have international speakers of his calibre at the conference helped hammer home the message her Centre has been delivering.

‘Getting farmers and their families to reprioritise their goals, putting health and safety first, has been a major challenge,’ Ms Brumby said.

‘But our conference has provided an exciting focus for showing what has been, and is being, achieved in other countries.’

For further information, please contact the National Centre for Farmer Health on 03 5551 8533

2010-09-16 Radical cure called for. The world arrives to spread the farm health message

Radical cure called for

The world arrives to spread the farm health message

The inaugural National Centre for Farmer Health (NCFH) conference has been swamped by national and international applications from speakers.

Guaranteeing it will be one of 2010’s must-events in the area of rural health and wellbeing.

NCFH director, associate clinical professor Sue Brumby, said she was overwhelmed by the  presentations received by organisers and support from sponsors.

With  over 60  presenters covering critical areas such as service delivery, mental health, men’s health, climate variability, chronic disease, allied health, diet and disease, the challenges of social interaction (such as alcohol issues in farming communities), farming families, agricultural health and safety and animal health/human health.

“We have selected speakers we feel will deliver the most relevant, and varied, messages to conference participants, arming them with knowledge  and positive information they can take back to their farming communities and workplaces, to make a difference”

“Which has seen us invite speakers and delegates coming from the US, UK and Sweden to attend the conference in Hamilton on October 11- 13”

The University of Iowa’s Professor Kelley Donham is focused on agricultural medicine, the specialty field of occupational health dealing specifically with the health and safety of agricultural producers, their families, and employees.

Production agriculture is recognised globally as one of the most hazardous occupations.

UK public health consultant Linda Syson-Nibbs will be speaking on the UK experience of the health and social inequalities experienced by farming communities.

Peter Lundqvist and Catharina Alwall Svennefelt, from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, will present on injury prevention in agriculture from a Swedish research perspective.

Organisers have worked hard to ensure the conference also recognises every aspect of life in rural and farming Australia.

Part of that has been the launching of a national photography competition in tandem with the conference.

“Its theme of celebrating rural life has already attracted a lot of interest – and entries – from around the country,” she says.

“Entries close on September 24 and they will be judged by a panel of award-winning photographers.

“Anyone can enter, with details on www.farmerhealth.org.au.”

The conference has also turned to the stage to help get its message across, with a night at the theatre featuring two comedies by Alan Hopgood AM on the evening of October 12.

Professor Brumby says these plays use humour to explore the effects diabetes and prostate cancer have on individuals and their families.

“Sponsored by DiabetesVic and the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, the plays will be followed by a forum with medical professionals,” she says.

Ends

Further Information contact Sally Stevenson  03 5551 8533

National Centre for Farmer Health

Media releases – 2010

Neil Barr: Social transition – for richer for poorer

Prasuna Reddy: Diabetes and depression: a difficult furrow to plough

Keynote presenter: Prasuna Reddy

Organisation: Flinders and Deakin Universities

Abstract:

Diabetes and depression is a devastating combination – for the patient, a difficult furrow to plough – which is why the TrueBlue project is so important. In Australia, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes has more than doubled since 1981, being almost 1.5 million now. At least half of those who have diabetes are unaware of their condition. By 2023 diabetes will be the leading contributor to the Australian burden of disease, with major morbidity from its complications. The prevalence of depression in diabetes has been shown to be at least double that of patients without diabetes. Despite the evidence, depression among diabetes patients is under-recognised, under-diagnosed, and under-treated.

The TrueBlue project – which was piloted in Hamilton, Horsham, and Mount Gambier – demonstrated the feasibility and acceptability of training practice nurses to identify and manage depression among patients with diabetes and heart disease. As a result of this successful pilot study a full scale clinical trial, funded by beyondblue, was set up to measure the effectiveness of this model in practices in New South Wales, South Australia, and Victoria. The trial will not be completed until 2011, but early and encouraging results are available for this conference.

Ross Pilkington: Farm fatalities – the last straw

Keynote presenter: Ross Pilkington 

 Organisation: WorkSafe

Abstract:

On average approximately one third of all work related fatalities each year in Victoria
occur on farms, this equates to 20 deaths in 2009.  Yet less than 5% of the Victorian workforce works on farms.

This disparity is a major concern to WorkSafe and is why significant resources continue to be placed into the agriculture sector in an attempt to reduce harm in the industry.  Anecdotal evidence shows that an ageing workforce, combined with use of machinery and the perception that farmers view risks and injuries as a normal part of farming are major factors in why injuries continue to occur in the agriculture industry.

It is WorkSafe’s view that safety on farms can be improved through increased Occupational Health and Safety awareness and farmers committing to control harmful factors on their properties.  This strategy further develops the industries ability and capacity to manage harm to people and allow for the implementation of systems and physical controls in their work activities.  The presentation will explore the mechanisms of Incentive, Assistance, Enforcement and Persuasion that WorkSafe use to improve safety in the broader Victorian community.  Farms, like any other industry and workplace in Victoria are required to meet the same legal standard.  This view, once accepted by the farming industry will lead to farmers taking ownership of the issues at their workplaces (family farm).

The paper also looks at the question of what is a workplace in relation to a farm – “Workplace or Home”

WorkSafe will then discuss the common myths of safety in farming and propose a “way forward” to a safety first paradigm of Zero Harm.

Linda Syson-Nibbs: Evidenced based practice – to do or not to do

Keynote presenter: Linda Syson-Nibbs

Organisation: Derbyshire County PCT, Derbyshire, UK

Abstract:

In the UK the health and social inequalities experienced by rural communities remain largely hidden by traditional health indicators. These inequalities have been compounded by the economic decline in farming which was accelerated in UK hill farming by the 2001 foot and mouth disease crisis. Despite the widely acknowledged link between poverty and ill health the impact of this economic decline has received little attention.

This first part of this presentation will describe a participatory heath needs assessment of a hill farming community in the Derbyshire Peak District National Park. A social model of health was used as an assessment framework and a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed including a controlled population survey of farmers registered with one general practice (n=500). The findings showed significant psychosocial ill health with farmers having an overall health status that was significantly lower than social classes IV and V and the UK mean.

The second part of this presentation will go on to describe the implementation and evaluation to date of Farm Out, a Primary Care Trust public health programme of interventions to address identified health needs. The initiatives developed include the use of the local agricultural market as a tandem outlet for health provision, the conduct of a photographic public mental health project targeting young farmers and the establishment of a Farming Life Centre to support psychosocial wellbeing.Created: March 27, 2014

John Martin: Farmer health, social connection and community resilience: bohemians or bedfellows?

Keynote presenter:  John Martin

Organisation: La Trobe University

Abstract:

The nature of rural society has meant that farmers regularly associate in informal ways with their neighbours discussing farming practices, prices and how policy impacts their livelihood. This informal, bohemian association, typical of writers, artists, and craftspeople, is essential for farmers to develop a perspective on the many issues and choices they have running their family business. With such a common set of issues farmers – often represented in popular culture as individualistic, self determining and stoic in the face of the environmental and economic adversity they encounter – are, in fact, bedfellows in their common story of addressing these challenges and their survival. Understanding the role of social connection and community resilience and its impact on the health and wellbeing of farming families and Australian rural communities is an important outcome of the Sustainable Farm Families program. In this presentation we reflect on the social and policy impacts of this innovative farming family health and wellbeing program; discuss the implication for farmer health policy more generally and predict the impact on the security of our nation’s food and fibre in the absence of public policy that recognises and responds to the increasing turbulence facing Australian farming communities.

Joe Graffam: Opening the gates on farmer health