4 pages, Social media use in public health and other health related research applications has seen a rapid increase in recent years. However, there has been very limited utilization of this growing digital sector in agricultural injury research. Social media offers immense potential in gathering informal data, both text and images, converting them into knowledge, which can open up avenues for research, policy, and practice. There are a number of ways social media data can be utilized in agricultural injury research. This paper touches on the adoption of these data sources in health research and discusses the use of social media as an exploratory research tool that can peer into and identify the edges of potential health and safety problems.
4 pages, Face-to-face outreach and in-person training have traditionally been key strategies in reaching agricultural producers, workers, and communities with safety and health information, but the COVID-19 pandemic has forced outreach educators to be creative and find alternative ways to reach, communicate, and share such information. In this commentary, we describe our use of social media to reach Latino/a cattle feedyard workers with COVID-19 related information. As a result of our effort, we reached over 54,000 people and demonstrated there is an audience for Spanish-language agricultural safety and health information. Social media can be a cost-effective method for virtual outreach in this new normal. We should look at this time as an opportunity to learn more about how our stakeholders obtain information and about how best we can connect with them. Although our outreach methods may be changing, our goal is not – we will continue to work to improve the safety and health of those who work in agriculture.
