; Partnering with the Progressive Agriculture Safety Day Foundation to Teach Children to Mitigate Risk and Prevent Injuries: A Study of How West Virginia Compares to National Statistics | Conferences | AgRisk Library

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Conference Name Partnering with the Progressive Agriculture Safety Day Foundation to Teach Children to Mitigate Risk and Prevent Injuries: A Study of How West Virginia Compares to National Statistics

Jodi Richmond and Brian Sparks

Summary

Summary

The Progressive Agriculture Foundation has sponsored 6584 Safety Days over the past 22 years and has impacted over 1.5 million people. Their mission is to provide education, training and resources to make farm, ranch and rural life safer and healthier for children and their communities and their vision is that no child would become ill, injured or die from farm, ranch and rural activities. The program provides comprehensive training and curriculum for coordinators and volunteers throughout the United States, U.S. territories, and Canada. Coordinators are tasked with taking this information and developing a comprehensive program that fits their community.

Risks for rural WV youth may be far different than for those raised in the Midwest or in the grainbelt. These children may be far more likely to be injured on an ATV than a tractor. Communication barriers sometimes exist and raising funds to support activities in economically-disadvantaged areas can be challenging. Grade school children are often already exposed to the problems of drug or alcohol addiction and may have pre-conceived ideas about law enforcement and first responders which makes our education program extremely important. Eleven Safety Days were offered in West Virginia in 2017. These programs were all individualized for their community, but focused on central themes and encourage the community to support our children. Evaluations stressed not only how much the children learned but also changes they intended to make at home. This poster will compare farm/home risks and injuries for WV children and provide information on how the different safety days address those risk as well as the participant survey results for those that participated in the long term follow-up.

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