New surveillance strategy for farming and forestry injury

Agriculture ranks among industries with the highest rates of occupational injury and fatality. Administrative medical datasets have long been thought to have potential for occupational injury surveillance. This research attempts to explore the feasibility of establishing an agricultural injury surveillance system in New York State that combines data from existing electronic sources. As part of a long-term effort to develop an agricultural and forestry injury surveillance system for the Northeast, researchers are developing an agricultural injury database that combines four sources of existing electronic injury data from six northeastern states. The four data sources are: ambulance reports, hospital discharge data, hospital emergency department data, and death certificates. The collaborating states (ME, MD, NY, NJ, NH, VT), comprise 68% of the Northeast agriculture and forestry workforce, and represent a range of sizes and commodity groups. This research will begin to fill a widely acknowledged surveillance data gap that prevents health and safety officials from developing and evaluating agricultural and forestry injury prevention programs. If successful, this model for surveillance could be adopted nationwide. Researchers will evaluate the benefits of combining these data sources. Previous research suggests that by merging these datasets, we can increase the overall number of farm cases identified and increase the degree of detail in each record. To test this assertion, researchers will compare the completeness of records from the different data sources before merging to the corresponding records in the single, composite file.