Community Partners for Healthy Farming Intervention Research

Funding Period: 1999-2003

States involved in project: Kentucky, Virginia, South Carolina

A community education program that promotes ROPS and seatbelts is to be disseminated and evaluated at many new sites in three states. The program was developed and field tested in two Kentucky counties.

Over the past 2.5 years, a quasi-experimental design, community trials study was conducted to promote farmers installing ROPS and seatbelts on their tractors. Farm community leaders from more than 40 organizations in the two counties involved assisted in developing and field testing the program materials and strategies. In the year prior to the intervention, equipment dealers across the two intervention counties and two control counties reported only a total of four ROPS retrofits. In the first year of the project, community leaders in both counties raised local ROPS incentive funds of $100 to $250 to be awarded at public drawings. Yet during the first few months, only a handful of farmers applied for the funds, and some of these farmers forfeited the incentive award rather than spend the additional $350 to $600 needed to install a ROPS. However, as the program was implemented, many farmers began to retrofit their tractors with ROPS: 14 in the first year, and 38 in the next 15 months, for a total of 52 retrofits. Three years and five months after the project was implemented a total of 81 tractors in the two intervention counties had been retrofitted with ROPS, only 12 of which involved incentive funds.

The program materials include: a) 30 high-quality PowerPoint® graphics about the risk of tractor overturns and effectiveness of ROPS and seat belts; b) a large set of mass communication messages (radio public service announcements, newspaper articles, and mailing and check stuffers); c) hands-on problem solving activities for use at community meetings; d) short interactive simulation exercises; and e) interactive, web-based exercises and materials. All of these materials tell interesting stories and lessons learned from actual tractor overturn injury events, and emphasize the role of ROPS and seatbelts in preventing injury and economic loss.

Context, process, and impact evaluation suggest the KY ROPS program successfully mobilized farm community groups to promote ROPS, and changed many farmers' attitudes and behavior with respect to retrofitting ROPS. The intended impact of the KY ROPS program is both environmental (the one-time addition of ROPS to unguarded tractors) and behavioral (willingness to expend the time and money to have ROPS installed on tractors). If the installation of ROPS on tractors were required by law, the behavioral component would not be important. But because such legislation does not exist, changing attitudes and behavior to support retrofitting ROPS is a prerequisite to an environmental control that is known to be at least 75% effective in preventing injury during tractor overturns.

The KY ROPS program appears to be an effective and needed behavioral intervention. In partnership with state- and county-level agencies in three states, this project proposes to further disseminate and evaluate the effectiveness of the program materials and activities.

• The Kentucky ROPS Project
  http://www.mc.uky.edu/scahip/rops.htm
• Go directly to the ROPS Notebook
  http://www.cdc.gov/nasd/docs/d000901-d001000/d000997/d000997.html
• National Agricultural Safety Database - search for "Kentucky"
  http://www.cdc.gov/nasd/

NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.