Farm Safety Education in New York Mennonite Schools

ABSTRACT

This intervention delivers agricultural safety information to Mennonite youth, grades 1 to 8 in their schools. The purpose is to reduce injuries in the Groffdale Conference, an Old Order Mennonite community in Yates County, New York. The New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health (NYCAMH) assisted community members to create an appropriate farm safety presentation for Mennonite children. A vital aspect of this approach is that members of the Old Order community are the educators who are delivering the information in a culturally appropriate manner. As an outside organization, it is unlikely that NYCAMH would have access to this population to directly deliver youth farm safety education.

Keywords:

• Child safety
• farm safety
• Old Order Anabaptist

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Yates County Emergency Management Program and the Yates County Injury Prevention Coalition for their assistance with this work. This work was funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, The Northeast Center for Agricultural Health, contract grant number: U50OH007542-06.