National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety Welcomes New Director

Tuesday, September 10th, 2024 -- 9:00 AM

The National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety is nearing three decades of preventing injuries associated with the agricultural worksite, one of the nation’s most hazardous worksites and the only one where children of any age may be present.

Significant changes in agriculture and in rural communities require new approaches to safety, and leading the center into this evolving landscape is a new director, Andrea Swenson, Ph.D., associate research scientist, Marshfield Clinic Research Institute.

Swenson joined the National Children’s Center in 2019 with training in human development and family science. Swenson’s research focuses on intersections between family dynamics, individual development and social environments in agricultural and rural communities.

She led the evaluation core for the center for the last five years and is currently principal investigator on a project researching barriers and motivators for use of the Agricultural Youth Work Guidelines, a tool to assist adults in assigning developmentally appropriate tasks for youth agricultural workers.

In addition, Swenson leads projects on supporting youth health and safety curriculum for educators and family interactions with medical systems in rural communities.

“Having been raised on a dairy farm and having family members engaged in agriculture, I value the complex labor that farm families and farm workers engage in every day, and strive to improve the quality of programs designed to increase the safety and health of those working in agriculture,” Swenson said.

Swenson is succeeding Barbara Lee, Ph.D., the only director in the center’s 27-year history. Lee rallied national attention to the issue of childhood agricultural injuries in the 1990s.

“Barbara’s work and commitment for safeguarding youth continues to save countless lives from death and injury,” Swenson said. “Her leadership continues to drive and inspire needed policy and research to improve work and living conditions of youth around the country and internationally."

"I look forward to her mentorship and guidance as we continue her legacy of enhancing the health and safety of all children exposed to hazards associated with agricultural work and rural environments.”

Lee was instrumental in establishing the National Children’s Center in 1997, funded with a five-year competitive grant from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The center is now one of 12 agricultural safety centers funded by NIOSH, and the only center dedicated to childhood agricultural injury prevention. The National Children’s Center is a program of the National Farm Medicine Center, part of the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute in Marshfield, Wis.

Lee now serves as the National Children’s Center’s associate director, providing administrative guidance as needed. She will focus on several projects, with an emphasis on organizational and public policy. Additionally, Lee is the senior associate editor for the Journal of Agromedicine.

Before the National Children’s Center, there were relatively few resources and virtually no guidance on strategies to safeguard working and non-working children on farms. The national approach to childhood agricultural injury prevention has paid off.

Among early Children’s Center interventions was the development of guidelines for parents to match chores with their child's developmental and physical capabilities. Follow-up data demonstrated a 56% decline in youth farm injury rates from 1998 to 2009, which ranked among Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report’s Ten Great Public Health Achievements 2001-2010.

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