Agricultural Safety and Health Training for Public Health Graduate Students

We propose a five year renewal lasting five years for a Training Program Grant (TPG) focused on agricultural occupational safety and health for students seeking a Master of Public Health (MPH), Doctor of Public Health (DrPH), and PhD degree in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. The program will be administered by the University of Kentucky College of Public Health and the Southeast Center for Agricultural Health and Injury Prevention. The Health of Agricultural Populations (HAP) TPG will apply agricultural occupational safety and health training across traditional public health course work, research training and field experiences. The HAP-TPG contains cross-cutting competencies for occupational safety and health in agriculture and is available for students across six departments of the University of Kentucky College of Public Health: Health Services Management, Health Behavior, Epidemiology, Environmental Health, Gerontology and Biostatistics. The current TPG was first funded in July 2006 with a modest budget of about $60,000 annually. To date, we have graduated 4 students from the program with partial NIOSH support, and an additional 4 students are currently enrolled, 2 of whom are scheduled to graduate in 2011. The renewal is requesting $125,000 total costs per year to fund at least 5 trainees a year via two student stipends and three student tuition packages each year. MPH students in the HAP TPG will require 42 to 44 semester hours to graduate, of which 15 semester hours are directly related to agricultural health and safety. DrPH students must complete 74 to 78 semester hours to graduate, of which 25 hours will be HAP-TPG intensive. PhD students in Epidemiology and Biostatistics require at least 58 hours to graduate, plus dissertation research and the corresponding residency credits. At least 16 of these hours must be directly related to agricultural occupational health and safety. Between 2011 and 2016, we anticipate at least 10 MPH students, 4 DrPH students and 4 PhD (EpilBiostats) students will graduate. A strong evaluation and diversity of recruitment strategies are planned. The University of Kentucky has proposed a commitment of $94,400 for student tuition and other support across the next 5 years. The continuation of this TPG is highly relevant to public health because it will increase the number of systematically trained, well-equipped practitioners W~IO can more fully address agricultural occupational safety and health problems through prevention, intervention, practice and service.