Risk behaviors are key drivers of occupationally related injuries and illnesses, considerably impacting the uptake and success of injury interventions, technologies, and practices. This is certainly true in the agricultural sector, where farmers often ignore recommended safety practices or have even been known to disable safety technologies. Although research studies have characterized specific individual safety or risk behaviors, few studies have thoroughly examined farmers’ risk and safety orientations or how these develop in response to environmental and societal exposures. This study utilizes data collected over the past decade with a variety of small to midsize farm personnel to explore the meanings that farmers ascribe to risk and safety and how these influence risk and safety behaviors. In all, over 90 interviews with farmers, farm-wives, and family members were reviewed. Researchers used a grounded theory approach to identify patterns of environmental and societal exposures, as well as their impact on farmers’ risk and safety orientations. Analysis revealed exposures and orientations to risk and safety, which could be largely explained through the lens of symbolic interactionism. This framework posits that people create a sense-of-self as a way of adjusting and adapting to their environment. For farmers in this study, belief in their ability to persevere allows them to succeed, despite the considerable stressors and challenges they face each day. However, this identity can, at times, be maladaptive when it is applied to safety decisions and hazard exposures. The authors discuss the implications of this research and how it may be used to productively inform future farm safety efforts.

Compared to their rural non-farming peers, farmers are less likely to access preventive healthcare services; however, the reasons for this disparity are poorly understood. We conducted semi-structured interviews with a total of 30 farm household members in central New York. Interview topics included farming identity, perceptions of one's health, past experiences with acute and preventive healthcare, and attitudes toward seeking healthcare services. Grounded Theory analysis of the interview transcripts revealed that (1) utilizing healthcare services is felt to be in conflict with the farming identity, (2) the need to conserve time and money for farm applications poses a barrier to healthcare utilization, (3) farmers decide to seek healthcare when they believe it is necessary to ensure survival of the farm, and (4) the decision to seek healthcare is most strongly driven by the presence of intolerable symptoms, prompting from others, and the perception that treatment will yield clear benefits. Efforts to increase farmers' utilization of healthcare services must address these considerations.

Fatalities due to tractor overturns have long plagued the US farm community. Constituting 20% of agricultural fatalities, tractor overturns contribute significantly to high rates of fatal injuries. In the past, many efforts have been directed toward reducing tractor overturns, with one successful US-based program offering rebates to farmers who retrofit their tractors with rollover protective structures (ROPS). In an effort to expand the program, the National Tractor Safety Coalition was formed. This coalition hosted a “Whole System in the Room” workshop to bring 50 stakeholders together. During this workshop, participants worked together to identify a common vision for the future of tractor safety and ROPS programs and commit to action. At the close of the workshop, coalition members set out to begin work on 100 short- and long-term commitments to begin implementing a National ROPS Rebate Program.

Objectives On US farms, tractor overturns are the leading cause of death; however, these fatalities are preventable with the use of a rollover protection structure (ROPS). A ROPS rebate program was established in New York in 2006 to address these fatalities. Due to its success, the program expanded to six additional states before being implemented as the National ROPS Rebate Program (NRRP) in 2017. The aim of this study was to evaluate the success of the NRRP implementation using short- and long-term ROPS outcome measures and identify which components of the consolidated framework for implementation research (CFIR) correlate with these outcomes. Methods Stakeholders involved in the NRRP implementation were surveyed at four time points, beginning at the time of the NRRP launch and then every six months. These surveys measured 14 relevant CFIR constructs. Correlations between CFIR survey items (representing constructs) and three outcome measures (intakes, funding progress, and retrofits) were used to identify CFIR survey items that are predictive of the outcomes. Results Eight CFIR survey items were highly correlated (rho ≥0.50) with at least one of the three outcome measures. These eight CFIR survey items included four constructs: access to knowledge and information, leadership engagement, engaging (in fundraising and funding requests), and reflecting and evaluating. Conclusions The results of this study provide important guidance for continuing the implementation of the NRRP. Similarly, these findings can inform the evaluation of other similarly structured implementation efforts and the application of CFIR in a variety of settings.