Media Advocacy Toolkit for Agricultural Safety and Health
A new resource examines the use of media advocacy for promoting greater awareness of tools that improve safety and injury prevention in farming.
- Lori Dorfman, DrPH, MPH
- Ingrid Daffner Krasnow
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Expertise
Public Policy Advocacy -
Programs
Berkeley Media Studies Group
Tractor rollovers are the leading cause of death on farms annually. While scientific literature has established the efficacy of rollover protective structures (ROPS) to prevent tractor overturn fatalities, many older tractors still lack these essential devices. Social marketing has helped, in part, to increase efforts to install and use these devices more frequently. However, ROPS provide a good example of why it’s important to address structural factors while also working to change downstream, individual behaviors.
PHI’s Berkeley Media Studies Group partnered with the Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety in Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing (NEC) to develop a new toolkit to leverage media advocacy to inform policy decisions. The goal is to bring greater attention to the proven success of ROPS and other agricultural health and safety interventions so that policy decisions can be more thoroughly informed by the science that promotes health and safety in every workplace.
Explore the Toolkit
See Also—Media advocacy for farm safety and health: current landscape and future directions
How are farm and tractor safety portrayed in the news? Do solutions appear? Who has a voice in coverage? These are some of the questions that BMSG researchers examined in a study published in March 2025 in BMC Public Health. The study also provides suggestions for occupational health and safety practitioners who hope to improve their use of media to advance farm safety agendas.
Originally published by Berkeley Media Studies Group
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