Educational Interventions to Improve Safety and Health Literacy Among Agricultural Workers: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Health and safety education for farmers has the potential to increase the level of health, safety literacy, and thereby improve farmers' health and quality of life. The aim of this paper is to provide a systematic review of the published literature documenting different educational interventions for agricultural workers that have the improvement of health and/or safety literacy as an outcome. A systematic search was conducted in PubMed, Embase, Scopus and PsycINFO databases for articles focusing on educational interventions for farmers' health and safety. From the 3357 initial hits, 36 unduplicated records met the inclusion criteria. The articles included in the review used educational interventions for farmers with the purpose of preventing farm-induced diseases and injuries, increasing the health and well-being of farmers, and promoting good manufacturing practices. The educational approaches considered varied from lectures, videos, newsletters, games, and community fairs, to involving the community in designing the intervention and training farmers to deliver the intervention to the community. Interventions that used evidence-based theories, which took into account cultural aspects and individual factors, used biomarkers as a behavior change measurement, and involved the community in the development of the intervention had the best results in terms of behavior change. The strategies of educational interventions identified in this review that produced good results have the potential to inform future researchers and policy makers in the design and implementation of public health interventions, programs and policies to improve the health of farmers and their families.Out of the three strategies mentioned, education aims to increase farmers' health and safety by encouraging them to adopt health-enhancing behaviors. To achieve this, education not only tries to enhance knowledge, but also skills, attitudes and practices that serve to prevent accidents and maintain good health. While the effects of health and safety education are often measured by distal outcomes such as injury and disease prevalence, a more direct outcome of health education is health literacy [5,6]. Health literacy is defined as the competence of individuals and communities to access, understand, appraise and apply information that is relevant to take decisions regarding one's health [6]. A related notion is safety literacy, which can be viewed as a content-specific form of literacy in a health context that focuses on the safety of the patient/worker [5,7,8]. A number of studies have shown that low health and safety literacy is a problem not only among the general population, but also among underserved populations [9][10][11][12]. Lower levels of health literacy are linked with low levels of education and literacy, and overall poorer health outcomes [13]. As such, education has the potential of improving general literacy levels as well as health literacy and safety literacy, and ultimately of leading to a better health and quality of life [14].Heal...

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