Primary Presenter: Diane S. Rohlman, , PhD, University of Iowa.
Additional Authors: Frederic Gerr, MD, Matthew Nonnenmann, PhD, Josie Rudolphi
, MA, University of Iowa.
Learning Objective: Learn more about educational opportunities in agricultural safety and health.
Agricultural medicine is a subspecialty of the broader field of occupational safety and health. Services are typically delivered to members of the agricultural community by rural safety and health professionals, who often do not receive adequate training. To address this gap, the Great Plains Center developed a nationally disseminated core Agricultural Medicine curriculum. Since 2007 the course has been offered 26 times in 8 states. The objective of this paper is to provide an update on the current status of the course and a description of methods to address sustainability. Based on the results of the 2012 consensus process, additional topics were added to the curriculum and the learning objectives for each topic were standardized to include (i) the scope of the problem, (ii) the hazards and health effects associated with specific agricultural tasks and settings, and (iii) the methods used to mitigate the hazard or evaluate the health effect. The Agricultural Medicine Course has served as a resource for training agricultural safety and health professionals for nearly a decade. Ongoing evaluation and refinement of the program has led to progressive modification to more fully meet the needs of agricultural communities.