This page provides a brief review of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing (AFF) surveillance efforts led by NIOSH and links to data sources useful for defining workforce population burden in the Pacific Northwest. This information might help teams address the "BNI" framework for project proposals using online query tools or sharing R code. We are currently trying to characterize stengths, limitations, and whether each source offers information about agriculture, forestry, and/or fishing. Please let Eddie ([email protected]) and Elena ([email protected]) know about any missing datasets or data analysis support needs.
1.1. "Although no longer actively conducting national agricultural injury surveys, NIOSH remains committed to the prevention of injuries, illnesses, and deaths in the agriculture sector. To do this, NIOSH will continue to work with its extramural partners to promote advances in agricultural injury surveillance; facilitate the use of surveillance information for prevention efforts among partners and stakeholders; and encourage the inclusion and accurate coding of industry and occupation in existing and future databases." -website
2. Injury and Illness Surveillance of U.S. Agricultural Workers Assessment of Recommendations and Actions (RAND 2017)
2.1. "The small population of workers directly responsible for feeding, clothing, and fueling the nation are shouldering a heavy public health burden. Since its inception, the AgFF Program has spearheaded numerous surveillance initiatives to understand the magnitude of injuries and illnesses in agricultural worker populations, identify vulnerable groups, and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions. In 2012, the program underwent a review from an independent panel convened to evaluate progress in program relevance and impact. The panel report included several recommendations for NIOSH to improve agricultural injury and illness surveillance. In certain instances, the panel suggested specific activities to perform to improve surveillance, include vulnerable populations, and extend NIOSH research to address emerging health issues faced by farmworkers. However, the panel report itself was unclear regarding how NIOSH should prioritize recommendations and actually implement activities. In 2015, NIOSH contracted with the RAND Corporation to assess options for action in response to panel recommendations. The goal of this report is to provide NIOSH with an assessment of the feasibility and desirability of carrying out actions to meet surveillance-related recommendations given current AgFF Program resources and priorities." -p.ix-x
2.2. "Overall, 12 actions were identified from the panel report, and our assessment found two actions that had high feasibility and desirability scores:
- Develop concise definitions of populations at occupational exposure risk, and profile them by AgFF commodity specialization, demographic factors, work organization patterns, worksite tasks across various enterprise types, and knowledge or use of emerging technologies.
- Identify and evaluate the potential of existing data sources (including those currently or recently used by NIOSH) for illness and injury surveillance of agricultural workers (includes actions 2.1 and 5.1)." -p.59-60
3. A Smarter National Surveillance System for Occupational Safety and Health in the 21st Century (NASEM 2018)
3.1. "The ability to carry out rigorous workforce safety and health surveillance has other challenges as well. For example, in certain industry sectors (such as agriculture) or demographic groups (such as day laborers or teenagers), the total number of workers in an industry is necessarily a rough estimate due to temporal fluctuations or the nature of the work. The limitations of such denominator data make it difficult to determine baseline rates for injuries or illnesses in order to measure risks, track trends, and evaluate the effectiveness of efforts to reduce injury and disease." -p.19
3.2. "The agricultural sector poses unique challenges for surveillance given the range of work settings from large industrial farms relying on a migrant workforce to small family farms where family members are also at risk. Additionally, the agricultural industry is exempted from many labor protection laws in the United States. Data on all farm-related fatalities are collected in the multisource CFOI, which shows agriculture to have one of highest fatality rates of any industry sector. Data on nonfatal injures among agriculture workers are collected in the SOII, however, as described, this survey excludes all farms with fewer than 11 employees. Also, the injury and illness experience of owner-operator farms and family members who work on these farms is not captured as these farms do not meet the BLS criteria for an employer. Despite limitations, the SOII indicates that agriculture has one of the highest rates of nonfatal injuries and illnesses. In the past, to provide information not available through the SOII, NIOSH conducted surveillance of injuries and illnesses among agricultural workers through a series of surveys carried out in collaboration with U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Labor, which were discontinued in 2015 due to fiscal constraints. NIOSH is currently considering alternative approaches to conducting surveillance of health and safety of production agriculture workers, including the potential role that its extramural program, specifically, the NIOSH-funded regional Agricultural Centers, might play (NIOSH, 2016c). The new proposed BLS household survey will also need to be evaluated on its ability to identify agriculture-related injuries and illnesses. Legislative changes that allowed BLS to survey employers with less than 11 employees would be useful but only partially effective to identify nonfatal cases missed in its employer survey, since it would not address the issue of the owner-operated farm that relies on family members. Conclusion: Agriculture is a high-risk industry sector where a legislative restriction and particular work arrangements reduce the ability to obtain accurate counts of nonfatal injuries and illnesses. Future evaluations will need to be conducted to determine if recommended changes are sufficient to address the current limitations in OSH surveillance in agriculture." -p.94-95
3.3. "Recommendation C: NIOSH should lead a collaborative effort with BLS, OSHA, the states, and other relevant federal agencies to establish and strengthen state-based OSH surveillance programs. This should be carried out as part of a national coordinated effort to monitor priority conditions, hazards, and exposures; to identify emerging workplace risks; and to facilitate prevention programs that address these concerns. Furthermore, this leverage surveillance and prevention expertise across agencies. This should include sharing data and taking advantage of unique state-level data sets and case-based surveillance capacities to identify and respond to emerging occupational safety and health hazards and conditions.
- Public Health Agency Collaboration Within States: NIOSH and other CDC centers that support state-based surveillance and prevention activities should promote collaboration among their state-level programs to monitor and address public health problems of shared concern, such as violence, asthma, infectious disease, traffic safety, and health inequities among vulnerable population groups.
- NIOSH should also:
- Explore and implement, as appropriate, alternative approaches to funding ongoing surveillance in the states as applied public health programs rather than research programs.
- Foster increased coordination and communication between its intramural and extramural surveillance programs.
- Encourage NIOSH-funded Education Research and Training Centers and Agricultural Health and Safety Centers to provide technical and research support to state surveillance programs in their regions as part of their required outreach and education core activity." - p.123-124
4.1. "NIOSH uses the 'Burden, Need, and Impact' approach to provide a strategic, structured, consistent, and transparent method to identify the highest occupational safety and health priorities and determine Institute research decisions that will have the greatest impact, in terms of reducing burden and improving well-being. (Felknor, 2019) The NIOSH Surveillance and Economic Programs are largely responsible for developing and providing data on burden at the national level using several sources. This includes general health surveillance metrics such as the magnitude of the problem as measured by counts or rates of a condition, exposure metrics, and trends by industry as well as related economic metrics." -p.26
5.1. "These new evaluation studies have the same goal of assessing program relevance and impact through a peer review process. However, based on the lessons learned from the previous eight reviews and advances in evaluation science, NIOSH evaluators are applying a theory-based approach to the evaluations: a modified version of Contribution Analysis. The emphasis of this approach is on demonstrating a program’s contribution to an outcome rather than establishing causal attribution." -website
| Region | Agency | Data | Years | Attributes | Strengths | Limitations | Ag, For, Fish |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US | DOL-BLS | Quarterly Worforce Indicators (QWI) | 2014-present | Online Query Tool; Various Types of Data Downloads; By State/County; H2A/H2B Not Included; Earlier Years Possible; 4-digit NAICS | |||
| US | DOL-BLS | Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) | 1990-present | .csv Download; 4-digit NAICS | |||
| US | DOL-BLS | Current Population Survey (CPS) | 2002-present | .xls Download | |||
| US | DOL-BLS | Geographic Profiles of Employment and Unemployement | 1999-present | .xls Download | |||
| WA | Employment Security | Agricultural Workforce Report | 2013-2017 | PDF Report | |||
| Test |
https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/occhealth/data/aginjury.html (Similar approach could be used for PNW)