Enhancing Surveillance of Injuries and Disease Among Agricultural Youth

ABSTRACT

Public health surveillance is fundamental to monitoring trends and for planning, implementation, and evaluation of health conditions in order to develop appropriate prevention and control programs. Farms and ranches are places where work and home life intersect in a unique way where risks are shared between work, home, and leisure. Public health surveillance systems have not been adapted to include agricultural youth as a subset at high risk of injuries and illnesses. Occupational health surveillance is used to monitor work-related illnesses and injuries but most have not allowed for continuous monitoring of agricultural-related illnesses, injuries, and disability. Limited evaluation of data sets available for surveillance or periodic reporting of disease, disability, medical care utilization, and risk factors relevant for youth living and working on farms and ranches other than traumatic injuries has been published. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the current most commonly used databases and their limitations, and to list potentially relevant databases and their limitations, as well as making recommendations to augment their usefulness in monitoring trends among youth living and working on farms and ranches.

Keywords:

• Agriculture
• surveillance
• youth