Canadian Agricultural Safety Association (CASA) Launch
Addition of Canadian agricultural injury and fatality data into our system is progressing smoothly. Since last fall, we've added over 100 Canadian case report forms (CRFs) to AgInjuryNews with more coming regularly. Fatality reports, 2016 to present, are complete and the team is currently working on entering non-fatal incidents. "My counterpart to the North has a real knack for entering injury data systematically and is an absolute pleasure to worth with", says AIN's research coordinator, Emily Redmond. Since CASA is adding valuable data to our system, we hope it is a partnership that extends for many years to come.
This is the fourth issue of the AgInjuryNews quarterly newsletter. We hope that these will keep our users and collaborators better informed of ongoing initiatives and milestone achievements. As always, if you have any questions, please connect with us.

PNASH Partnership
The Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health (PNASH) Center is integrating Ag Injury News into its regular communications to PNASH Investigators and as cases for education. PNASH has contributed to the database since 2017. PNASH was inspired by the Childhood Agricultural Safety Network's email alerts on children's injuries and deaths. Marcy Harrington at PNASH shared, "It is a profound experience to hear these stories and the timeliness is important for us. We serve a four-state region and can be far from the communities we serve. Some articles are rich with background and personal quotes and these can make a real impact in training others." 
Youth Operators- How AIN can help drive surveillance improvements
There is no solid research on the topic of youth operators, nor is there much in the peer-reviewed literature. However, we have uncovered a number of these types of cases and plan to expand that search, into something more meaningful. The coding of these types of reports within other surveillance systems is inconsistent and needs to improve. For example, a 9 year old driving a skid steer backs out of the farm driveway into the highway, where an oncoming car collides with it, sending the motor vehicle operator to the hospital (a case that occurred in Marathon County, Wisconsin in 2018, but never hit the news). Was this an agricultural injury? Absolutely. Where would it be captured?

AgInjuryNews takes care in ensuring it accurately captures and codes all agricultural and agricultural-related injuries. We aim to maintain consistent and easy-to-use inclusion criteria so we do not miss any cases of interest to both farmers and agricultural health and safety professionals.


The Unborn Victims
The collection (and reading) of these types of reports is difficult. The reports keep coming, we keep collecting them, and you continue to be supportive collaborators who find value in this type of data. Over the past few months, we've continued to explore both our data, and our gaps. One topic that has emerged in conversation is the collection and coding of unborn victims, still in utero. Sadly, we have uncovered some of these tragic reports, such as the one linked below, where a woman operating a farm ATV lost her life and the lives of her unborn twins. We will continue to investigate these types of cases, and are currently engaged in discussions of compiling and writing this as a case report. If this topic is of interest to you, please reach out to our team.


Hill Visits/Pushing for Policy
AIN has served as a pool of stories for many uses, and these are often useful when discussing policy with legislators or organizational management. We will continue to supply these stories, through ad hoc requests by our partners and collaborators, or by pointing users to the filter options and available customizable email alert options. If you have any questions about how best to find reports that would be useful for your work, please do not hesitate to reach out to our team.
Australian Encounter
What a small world! We're thrilled to hear of these serendipitous findings and unexpected outcomes, happening around the globe. Here is an example of an encounter from new NFMC Associate Research Scientist, Dr. Florence Becot:

"While attending a rural health conference last year, and shortly before starting my position at the NFMC, I was connected to Dr. Danielle Couch from La Trobe University in Australia because we are both sociologists who focus on rural health issues. We are also both interested in using news media as a data source in our work. At one point during our conversation, I mentioned that one of my future colleagues (Bryan Weichelt) also uses media stories in his work. This is when she brought up the work of U.S. scholars that she had been reading and the citation she sent was the Weichelt et al., 2018 in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. Her, Dr. Weichelt, and I are making plans for a conference call to further discuss out respective research interests and potential collaborations."

-Dr. Florence Becot, Associate Research Scientist, NFMC (pictured)
AIN all-terrain vehicle injury data examined in JMIR paper-5.2 Impact Factor
A pilot project funded by CS-CASH led to a recently accepted paper with a journal whose impact factor is over 5- JMIR Public Health and Surveillance. A cross-discipline team from Penn State, Iowa, and NFMC (Wisconsin) was led by Bryan Weichelt, PhD over the past 18 months. "I was honored to work with this group of authors, exploring AIN data and other datasets", Weichelt said. The team found consistencies and differences between the datasets, with final conclusions pointing to a need for better agricultural injury surveillance at a national level. The team thanks Dr. Risto Rautiainen and the CS-CASH for funding the project.



Weichelt B, Gorucu S, Jennissen C, Denning G, Oesch S. Assessing the Emergent Public Health Concern of All-Terrain Vehicle Injuries in Rural and Agricultural Environments: An Initial Review of Available National Datasets in the U.S. JMIR Public Health Surveill (forthcoming). doi:10.2196/15477 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/15477
Citing AgInjuryNews
To view an updated listing of peer-reviewed manuscripts resulting from the work related to AgInjuryNews, please visit our Learn More page . If interested in citing the system/data, please use this:


Weichelt B., Salzwedel, M., Heiberger, S., Lee, B.C. (2018). Establishing a Publicly Available National Database of U.S. News Articles Reporting Agriculture-Related Injuries and Fatalities. American Journal of Industrial Medicine. 61(8), 667-674. https://doi.org/10.1002/ a jim.22860

The Core Team
Bryan Weichelt PhD, MBA, Associate Research Scientist, NFMC
Emily Redmond 
Research Coordinator & Data Specialist, NFMC
Serap Gorucu PhD,
Assistant Research Professor
Penn State University
Matt Pilz
Programmer/Analyst, NFMC
Rick Burke, MPH
Research Specialist, NFMC
Megan Sauer
Research Assistant, NFMC

Contributors to this Issue
In addition to our Core Team, listed above, the following have contributed to this issue of the AIN Newsletter: Florence Becot, PhD and Scott Heiberger. Thank you!

Follow Us
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