In recognition of National Injury Prevention Day, this episode takes a closer look at pediatric agricultural injuries and what prevention looks like in real farm communities. Lauren sits down with Dr. Jenna Gibbs from the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital and Libby Richie from the Great Plains Center for Agricultural Health to discuss the risks children face on farms, how those risks develop, and the practical steps families can take to keep kids safe.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the student hosts, guests, and contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the University of Iowa or the College of Public Health.

Lauren Lavin:

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Plugged into Public Health. Today, we’re observing National Injury Prevention Day, which is November 18, and digging into an issue that impacts families across Iowa and the Midwest and the country as a whole. We’re going to focus specifically on pediatric agricultural injuries, why they happen in what truly preventable harm means in farm communities. I’m joined today by Dr. Jenna Gibbs from the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital and Libby Richie from the Great Plains Center for Agricultural Health.

Today, they offer clear guidance on farm safety, child development and the realities of preventing injuries in rural settings. Listeners can walk away with practical insight into common risks, age appropriate farm tasks and what effective injury prevention looks like when safety, tradition and family norms intersect. I’m Lauren Lavin and, if it’s your first time with us, welcome. We’re a student-run podcast that talks about major issues in public health and how they connect to everyday life whether you work in the field or not so let’s get plugged into public health.

Plugged into Public Health is produced and edited by the students at the University of Iowa College of Public Health and the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the student hosts, guests and contributors, they do not necessarily reflect the user opinions of the University of Iowa or the College of Public Health.

Well, thank you both, Dr. Gibbs and Libby, for talking with me today. I’m excited to have both of you here. If you guys could just each introduce yourself so that our listeners have some background.

Libby Richie:

My name is Libby Richie, I work in both outreach and research for the Great Plains Center for Agricultural Health which is one of the 12 NIOSH funded ag centers that’s located at the University of Iowa within the College of Public Health. So, like I said, half of my job is working in outreach, developing materials, talking with farmers, going to ag shows and events and getting our safety and health messages out there, sometimes that includes training. And then, on the research side of things, I mostly right now am working in whole body vibration exposure. So, we currently have a project going on with farmers around Iowa and that’s what we’re looking at.

Lauren Lavin:

Wait, what’s whole body vibration exposure?

Libby Richie:

How do you even explain that? Well, when you’re in ag machinery, the whole thing vibrates and shakes and so it causes a lot of lower back pain issues for farmers-

Lauren Lavin:

Ooh, interesting.

Libby Richie:

… and so we see that quite a bit and that’s why we’re looking at that.

Lauren Lavin:

Is there a solution for it?

Libby Richie:

Possibly. Specifically, the project we’re looking at right now is, when they manufacture seats and seat suspension systems for ag machinery, those seats are tested in a lab environment for short durations and it’s never been looked at how well these seat suspension systems work in the field and over time.

Lauren Lavin:

For hours and hours of time.

Libby Richie:

Yeah. So, it’s looking at the … We have different years of machinery and so it’s just looking to see is it performing like it’s supposed to and when it was tested in a lab, is it still performing to that level.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s so interesting. That’s something I don’t think that lay person would ever think of as an occupational hazard, if you will, of farming. So, that’s really interesting. And, Dr. Gibbs, introduce yourself?

Jenna Gibbs:

Yes. My name’s Jenna Gibbs, I’m a doctoral level industrial hygienist and I am manager of the Injury Prevention and Outreach at the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s … Still children. And I love that Libby mentioned whole body vibration because it is pretty much the end of harvest here in Iowa but I think about that a lot when I drive at night and I see that the combines have the headlights on because I know, when I see that, I knew they were probably going that morning so often I’m like, “They’re on an 18-hour shift.”

Libby Richie:

Oh, yeah, mm-hmm.

Lauren Lavin:

Did you always know that you were going to work adjacent to children when you got into this career?

Jenna Gibbs:

No, it came as a surprise. The children’s hospitals had an injury prevention program for a really long time and I am new to the role and we can talk about it a little bit but, anytime you have a level one trauma hospital, so level one means you’re dealing with really, really serious life-ending injuries or procedures, and we’re the only level one children’s hospital in our state currently. To keep your accreditation, you must have an injury prevention program and we’re really pleased to have that program because we want to be limiting these injuries in our communities. There’s a lot of researchers in the hospital too so it’s good to be one of those.

Lauren Lavin:

And today we’re really centering this podcast around Injury Prevention Day which is November 18. Do you want to give a little bit of background on Injury Prevention Day and what that means for us?

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah. So, lately in our state, I feel like a lot of the media attention has been diverted to some of these longer term chronic illnesses especially cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity epidemic, all of that’s getting a lot of attention. But a lot of people forget that, for adults, and that’s people really in the prime productive years of their life, and children, so basically anyone from age one to 44, injuries are the leading cause of fatality.

Lauren Lavin:

Really?

Jenna Gibbs:

For that age group. So, then the other thing about injuries is the vast majority of them are preventable. So, just speaking from the hospital perspective, when you have a young person come in who’s been injured and it’s life-threatening, knowing that it’s preventable is super, super [inaudible 00:06:07] the family, you know what I mean? Emotions are high and those conversations are extremely delicate. So, a lot of the work that I do is in that prevention realm so that they don’t have to come to the hospital so it’s really important.

Lauren Lavin:

Right. How do you define preventable in those cases?

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah. Probably the best example just off the top of my head that I can think of is the evolution of car seats for children. And I usually giggle when I talk about this because car seats expire, it seems like, after every couple years. But even in my own lifetime when I was a child back in the 1980s, we didn’t even use them and now we have so much research showing that those car seats absorb force for very small bodies so much differently than a generic seatbelt. And so, car seats are a perfect example about injury prevention, about knowing how to install them and appropriate ages and front facing, rear facing, all of that really saves so many lives because car accidents can be quite traumatic especially at high speeds. And at high speeds, it’s really hard to protect those little bodies in a machine where all the seat belts are designed for adults.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s a really great point and a good example that so many listeners can probably connect to.

Libby Richie:

Yeah, I would just add onto what you were talking about with it is your role to explain that these injuries were preventable and I know that there’s been a lot of work done even within the NIOSH ag centers. So, they had a whole initiative on not using that term accident and instead using the term incident and a lot of where we see that term is in reporting of injuries especially in agriculture. They did a lot to try and make it clear why it was so important that reporters on ag injuries use the word incident instead of accident or use traumatic injury or anything other than accident because it implies that it wasn’t preventable so, yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Cool, interesting, I haven’t heard this. So, incident versus accident.

Libby Richie:

Mm-hmm.

Lauren Lavin:

Also, it makes me think of that there might be blame. I don’t know, is that a hard … Because I feel like a lot of our language is shifting away. We don’t want to blame anyone, we don’t want to put that type of thing on people but I would say the switch from accident to incident instigates that there was probably a causal actor. Have you found that that’s hard to then make that switch because you’re putting blame on someone or something?

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah, it’s really interesting just in the few conversations I’ve had with nurses and clinical staff at the hospital that, during interactions with families, that type of language is so important because, for a lot of injuries, they are preventable. And when we think about blaming, we usually want to blame one person, it’s just our human nature to find the villain whether it be a specific spouse or sibling or someone who was not being responsible. And I think, in a lot of injuries, there’s multiple individuals held and, when you look at something like a device, like a tractor or an ATV or a product that causes the injury, then sometimes part of the blame could also be assigned to the manufacturer.

Lauren Lavin:

Right.

Jenna Gibbs:

So, that’s why it’s so important to use the word incident because, when you use that word accident, that’s what it drives a lot of people to do is to find out who to blame and that often leads to non-productive conversations because it gets too emotionally charged.

Lauren Lavin:

So, each year, IPRC highlights a different theme around National Injury Prevention Day and this year that’s pediatric agricultural industries. So, what makes this issue so pressing at this time? Why did they pick it this year especially in Iowa?

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah. So, I grew up working on farms. I originally grew up in Southern Missouri in a town of only about 2,000 people and I was a very tough, hay hauling kid so I feel like, at the heart of it, I really understand farm culture. A lot of farms in Iowa need youth to one day take over the farm and understand parents’ roles and responsibilities and, a lot of times, understanding that work begins very young. And it’s really important for kids to assume responsibilities on the farm, I’ve trained and talked to young adults forever and a lot of them start working and doing farm chores at age four.

Lauren Lavin:

Wow.

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah, pretty young. Four to eight, I would say, is pretty average. I do think it’s really important that kids fulfill chores and have tasks to do, however, there’s this concept of safety-ism where you want to give kids tasks to do on farms but you also don’t want to endanger their life. So, how do you know where to draw that line and it’s not always 100% clear. And I can use climbing as a really good example. It might seem really easy to ask a kid to climb a grain wagon and check on the grain or to climb a bin just to look at it because they’re small, they’re agile and it may see something they do all the time but, really, it’s not something they’re supposed to do until they’re 10 or over. And knowing all those little nuances is just too much sometimes.

Lauren Lavin:

Sometimes more knowledge does not necessarily mean better outcomes if it depends on how it’s communicated and in what type of resources people have. For people who are not familiar with farm culture, when you say that four to eight-year-olds get chores, what type of chores are they doing and what would be age appropriate for them at that time?

Jenna Gibbs:

A lot of times, when they’re that young, when we ask them what they were doing, they can’t even remember, honestly.

Lauren Lavin:

They just know they were working.

Jenna Gibbs:

I remember it only goes back to five or six but they remember holding buckets or grabbing tools for their parents, like, “Go get that bucket.” Picking up rock is very common, work with really small animals like bottle-feeding cats and stuff is really, really common. But a lot of times, when we look at kids that young, they have a lot of developmental challenges just with balance and fall risk and also understanding risk, a lot of that doesn’t even happen until you’re much older. So, it’s really important, if you’re going to be living a rural lifestyle, to assign age appropriate tasks and that can be really difficult because we’re probably talking about over a hundred tasks.

Lauren Lavin:

I think that risk point is interesting because I spend a lot of time with college students. I don’t even think we have the risk thing figured out so I don’t think we can expect a 10-year-old to but I think that’s a good point.

Libby Richie:

I will add, again, the National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Safety.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s a mouthful.

Jenna Gibbs:

You go it, Libby, good job.

Libby Richie:

It was them who came out with some youth working guidelines, isn’t that right? Jenna, maybe you’re familiar? I don’t know how young it goes but they did do a lot of looking into the physical and then mental, emotional, psychological capabilities of different age groups and what some examples of age-appropriate tasks will look like on the farm. So, always trying to plug our resources.

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah. So, a very big vast majority of them begin at age 10 or older just because that understanding of risk. And at the hospital, we see a lot of falls particularly of little kids just because their balance and their brain development isn’t quite there yet. I’ll give you a good example. My son didn’t even begin piano lessons until he was five and a half years old because he didn’t even have the developmental ability to play the keys. So, a lot of those tasks for youth on farms begin around age 10 with some of the more complex ones not even starting until they’re in their teens. So, those are just really good general guidelines.

Because I think it’s important when we’re talking about injury prevention, we can’t give people unrealistic advice. A lot of times, what we hear from farm families is, well, I don’t want my kids to live in a bubble, they need some exposure to the task that they will be taking over one day on the farm and so they’re a lot … I think it’s a lot better to offer advice where they can do something just not everything.

Lauren Lavin:

Some scaffolding to maybe get to where you want to be. What are the most common injuries that you see in children from agricultural incidents?

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah. I would say about half of all the pediatric trauma data, so that means that they’re coming in for emergency room visit, it’s severe enough are falls especially among our super young and the really highest risk for falling tends to be zero to four. So, those are those kids I told you that were so little, they probably can’t even handle a chore and also the falls are a lot between 14 to 18-year-old kids. And I’ve been working in the agricultural space for a really long time and there’s a lot of unsteadiness both to the farm equipment, some of the farm equipment steps are really high. To get on some of the bigger tractors, I feel like you have to be six-feet tall to even take the initial step.

Libby Richie:

Yeah. This harvest, I’ve already almost fell off climbing a combine. And I was three points of contact too, I was doing it the right way and just sometimes … It’s rough.

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah. And any grain storage building, most of those have ladders and you can see-

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, and they’re tall.

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah, it almost looks like a play equipment. But another really big thing is, when you’re in agriculture, you’re outdoors a lot in pretty much all conditions. So, if you think about working with livestock like cattle or something like that, it can get really muddy and slippery both in the barns and in the yard. And so, a lot of times, when we talk about fancy boots with tread and all that equipment, we always think about adults when we’re giving that advice. But if those kids are going to be in those environments with you where it’s muddy and slick, then they should be wearing the boots too. Another big one that we see is lawn mowers, especially the riding mowers. And just to give you a perspective, it’s the number one cause of lost limbs-

Lauren Lavin:

A lawn mower?

Jenna Gibbs:

… for kids under 10. It’s the number one cause for limb loss and a lot of that happens to very little kids under five where, again, it gets back to that risk perception, not understanding risk and being too young. Some of the riding lawn mowers almost look like toys or maybe they’ve been given a ride by a parent on there and so they assume it’s safe. It’s loud but it’s safe so, a lot of times, very young children will run up on the parent or whoever or sibling who’s trying to do riding, mowing. So, that’s another big thing that we’ve been working on just trying to promote out keep your kids inside and away while you’re mowing and really trying to show them that the mower is just like a farm tool, obviously, it’s not a toy, it’s something that you want to stay away from.

And then the very last one that we see a lot on farms especially among the teenage age group is ATV crashes. They continue to be a really big deal and, just in the last few years, I think Iowa, just our state, averages 250 to 300 ATV crashes a year that result in a pediatric trauma event at the hospital. I think, personally, that’s very under-reported because I’ve been doing ATV safety discussions and outreach for almost 10 years now and about one-third of the young adults I talked to in a classroom have been in a crash. So, not all of them go to the hospital, it might be a bruised up tailbone or something but, when they go to the hospital, they’re very, very costly because a lot of them tend to be head-based traumas.

Lauren Lavin:

When you say an ATV crash, is that an ATV with a car? Is that an ATV into something? What do those crashes look like?

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah, a lot of them involve the ATV only but it’s interesting that you say the car thing because it’s something that we at the hospital are trying to monitor because a lot more counties in Iowa now have rules where the ATVs can be on paved roads and, anytime we have vehicle sharing, we get nervous. Cars are huge, they weigh tons, an ATV may weigh 700 pounds in comparison. But a lot of them tend to involve a single person, sometimes dual passengers and a lot of them have to deal with rolling the ATV, so turning it over.

ATVs don’t go near as fast as cars so the speed differential on roads is really concerning. A lot of times, cars can come up on an ATV or a UTV really quickly. And ATV, there are ATV models for youth and usually, the smaller the ATV, the slower the speed is. So, you might have some of these younger models that even go less than 10 miles per hour and so that’s a really big flash sign that cannot be used on roads, it’s going so slow and it’s so small, it’s going to be hard to be visible. So, yeah, ATV use on roads is a big health concern.

Lauren Lavin:

Do a lot of kids have access to ATVs on farms?

Jenna Gibbs:

I would say ATVs … So, in my own experience talking with young adults, training young adults, if they grew up on a farm, work on a farm, about 90% of them say they use ATVs for farm related work so they are an extremely useful tool. Just in my own experience too, I know a lot of people who live on farms that they get an ATV before they get a tractor because that’s how critical it is for getting around and hauling stuff. So, yeah, they’re really common.

Libby Richie:

I also come from a farming family and, yeah, they make them ATVs for younger kids now. So, my cousin who’s, I think she was probably 10 because this was a couple of Christmases ago, got an ATV that was for her size.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s well before driving age also as a side note.

Libby Richie:

Yeah.

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah. Yeah, I would say ATVs are really similar to … They’re a little similar to bicycles that, if you begin riding them young, whatever safety behaviors you do as a really small child are going to continue with you probably into adulthood. So, let’s just use bicycles as an example. If you spent five years of your youth riding a bicycle up and down your streets and your parents never had you wear a helmet, by the time you get to be 12, 13 and now you have to wear a helmet because you’re doing a bike road race or something, that may seem really uncomfortable to you because it’s the first time you’ve ever done it. And it’s pretty similar with ATVs too where it seems weird to have someone wear an ATV helmet so young, it’s not going very fast but we got to think about those behaviors carrying on with them and to adulthood. So, I know, at the University of Iowa Hospital, we have done ATV safety training with over 70,000 kids.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s incredible.

Jenna Gibbs:

Yes, 70,000. And a lot of times after we do the ATV safety training, we ask them at the end are you going to change any safety behaviors, are you going to wear a helmet more often, are you going to stay off the roads and, a lot of times, the people who say, yes, they’re going to really change some of these safety behaviors, a lot of times, they are people who actually haven’t ridden ATVs so they’re less frequent users. So, the people who really frequently ride the ATVs are like the bike example where those habits start really, really young and that shows how much power the parents have on making those decisions.

Lauren Lavin:

How do you handle some of the traditional views? So, this could be ATVs, not wearing a helmet or starting chores really early on certain chores with what we know now to be safer for children. How do you handle those conversations between either children and parents?

Jenna Gibbs:

As an outreach specialist, I see this trauma data come in all day long so I’m really passionate about it and I care about it but, at the end of the day, people care about what’s going on in their daily lives. And so, I actually am a big believer in voluntary action. I think the vast majority of parents truly want to do the right thing for their kids completely voluntarily. So, I think a lot of it just has to do with education and just knowing how important this is.

A really good example is if you go in to buy an ATV but the helmets are in a back room that aren’t very visible but all the really cool models of ATVs are right out front. That’s a really good example where the education is just not there. All the focus is on the model, what it does, how awesome it is and safety equipment may be in a back closet somewhere. So, just changing those structures I think are really important.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Well, in education, it makes it seem less like you’re telling them what to do and more giving them here’s what I know, you should do with that what you can.

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah, then they can make their own decisions about how much they want to do or what safety behaviors they want to change without feeling that pressure of enforcement or something like that. Sometimes people get really surprised at the Ag Youth Worker Guideline for ATV use. So, ATVs can be used recreationally, that means just for fun, even a small child could even operate a battery operated one around their yard, for example. But to use the ATV for work to check on cattle, to drive from one farm location to another, the recommended age according to the Ag Youth Worker Guidelines really says that youth really shouldn’t be doing that high level of task until they’re 16 and a lot of people are surprised by that but that just shows the nature of the risk.

A lot of the adult model ATVs are quite large and you have to ride them actively in order to control them so they really have to fit your body. Very similar to a car and reaching the pedals, a lot of those ATVs aren’t fit for the body until they’re 16 years old.

Lauren Lavin:

Interesting.

Jenna Gibbs:

You can tell when you see. If you’ve ever seen a really small person on an ATV, it just looks awkward.

Libby Richie:

Yeah.

Jenna Gibbs:

And actually, I’m just saying, as a 42-year-old mom, when I ride my husband’s side, I feel awkward. His active riding looks a lot more natural and fluid, he can really control the handlebars and stuff and, for me, if I hit a bump, I feel like my whole body goes flying. And that’s just the difference between a male and a female so you can understand how those extremes get even worse for really little bodies like children.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, yeah.

Libby Richie:

Yeah. I took one out to a field this fall and it was so awkward for me. And actually, we have a farmer who has a son who’s 14 and has been riding them for a long time and hasn’t had any serious accident or injury but was recently going over a bump too fast and just the way the ATV landed has now caused some back issues for him. It’s not even necessarily rolling it or crashing into something else but just the way, like Jenna said, you maneuver it can be difficult for kids under 16 or even kids who are over 16 but smaller.

Jenna Gibbs:

Mm-hmm.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Especially if they’re fit for a grown man who does a lot of farm work, that’s just a very different body than a 10-year-old girl driving that same piece of machinery.

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah. And since I’ve been doing outreach with young adults so long, and this would extend to teenagers too since I now represent the children’s hospital, I tell a lot of teenagers, if something feels uncomfortable or unnatural for your body, don’t be afraid to speak up and just say I’m not ready for this piece of equipment yet, I don’t have very good control of it because your body shape and size might be completely different than your siblings or something like that. And it’s hard to do. I’m using myself as an example but my husband makes fun of me because I look bouncy and funny on it and different than he does and so it’s hard to advocate for yourself especially as a teenager.

Libby Richie:

Have you ever driven an ATV through a cornfield? That is not easy, it tosses you left and right. It’s, yeah, very challenging.

Lauren Lavin:

When you think about communicating, because you had mentioned that you talked to 70,000 kids about ATV and you do a lot of outreach as well, Libby, what does outreach to these population groups look like? How do you do it?

Jenna Gibbs:

I think some of our funnest outreach is the use of props. When we talk about ATV tires and off-road use, we actually bring the tires with us so they can see the difference between a car tire which is for paved roads and ATV tires and we talk about why. We also bring an ATV simulator and we talk about active riding and how hard it can be to do that if your body is too small. So, a lot of times, we’ll choose a kid who’s in middle school who’s the appropriate age but maybe they have that smaller body that I was telling you about and, when they view on the simulator how hard it is to move their center of gravity and control the ATV in a really safe simulated situation, the rest of the students see that in real time while a presenter is talking about it, I think that can be really convincing because you’re not just being told with words or a PowerPoint. You’re actually actively seeing a middle schooler on the device pretend going up the hill.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, and you’re a peer.

Jenna Gibbs:

And it’s a peer, it’s someone that you know. And a lot of them have already been on ATVs and, even the person on the simulator is like, “Wow, I’ve never thought about how my body does this when I’m going down a hill.” So, that hands-on simulation, I think, is what I think is super effective.

Lauren Lavin:

Libby, what does your outreach look like?

Libby Richie:

Well, it looks like a lot of different things, I think we tend to try to tailor it to the age group who would be there. So, a classic example is when we go to national FFA every year and we get an opportunity to talk to kids from all over the US and that versus, for example, if we go to a show at the Farm Progress Show where you might get a lot more families, some with smaller children. So, it’s about tailoring whatever we’re bringing to the audience and how do we get people in. Like Jenna said, hands-on things are going to be the best. We try to come up with different things and I give a lot of props to the outreach and education centers and the stuff that they’ve come up with, it’s pretty incredible, especially the simulators, I think that’s the best way to teach people and get them to remember it because there can sometimes be a lot to teach and a lot to remember. So, anything you can do that’s hands on and fun that might help it stick a little bit more is what we tend to try to do.

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah. Something that we’ve been doing at the hospital a lot is we like to call it top five tips, we stole that from TikTok. People like hearing people’s top five tips for safety and, even with our ATV safety training, it’s 10 stars. So, we do top 10 tips which is a lot to remember but we are presenting for an hour. But I think, if you can condense it to really short takeaways like that, I love the top five. Maybe we can’t remember five things but I bet a lot of people see a top five tips and they at least remember one or two. And so, I think condensing it down is good but it can be really hard when you’re trying to condense down 30 years of ATV safety research in to five tips.

Libby Richie:

And then you’re like, “What if I leave this one thing out and it’s what that person needed?” That’s, yeah, stressful.

Jenna Gibbs:

Yeah. So, at the end of the day though, that’s what’s realistic for people.

Lauren Lavin:

As we wrap this up, is there anything else you wanted to touch on?

Jenna Gibbs:

I want to say that, for child injury prevention, I think a huge core audience for that is first time parents. And anything that we can do to set first time parents up for success is crucial whether that be the type of car seat that they choose and maybe they do have ATVs at home and they are setting the expectations for when they’re going to allow their kids to use those. That’s so critical because first time parents have a lot of power and a lot of first time parents, as we know, do things much differently than the grandparents did. And I say that slowly because sometimes families argue about it but, of course, that first child really sets the scene for the rest of the siblings.

First time parents are a really critical audience, I think, for the hospital and a lot of our injury prevention starts when they come in for those pre-birth checkups, here’s the things that you need to do to keep your child safe. And so, I think going forward with the rural and agricultural community, we can do something similar. You live on a farm, are you having a baby for the first time? Well, here’s what you’re going to do at each age to set them up for success. To me, that’s much easier and realistic than telling someone with a 12-year-old that they have-

Lauren Lavin:

Got to take away the ATV.

Jenna Gibbs:

You got to take it back, you got to take back everything you’ve been having them do, that’s really, really hard. So, I feel like, going forward, first time parents will be a really important audience.

Lauren Lavin:

What gives you hope to continue in this work and makes you motivated to keep pushing forward in injury prevention?

Jenna Gibbs:

Well, man, as injury prevention program manager, every day I get the alerts from our trauma system and so it will say the age of the child and the cause of the incident and how old they are and, I’m not going to lie, they roll in all day. And I know it’s just a email so, as the program manager, I’m managing a lot of data and decision-making, I’m not in the emergency room but seeing those alerts come in all day day after day is really heart-breaking because you know, every time you see an alert, there’s crying parents somewhere.

Lauren Lavin:

Someone’s lives probably just changed.

Jenna Gibbs:

Yes. And when you see and you experience real-time the frequency of which it happens just at our hospital, you realize very quickly how important it is. Even if you can reduce those numbers by one a day, you are dramatically changing someone’s life. So, that’s what keeps me motivated is seeing those causes and seeing what rolls in. If we have a good day, that feels really good too, it makes you feel like maybe what you’re doing is working but, yeah. It’s really easy to care about children’s injury prevention because no one wants to see that happen.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s pretty good motivation.

Jenna Gibbs:

Yes.

Lauren Lavin:

Well, thank you Dr. Gibbs and Libby for joining me today, this has been really insightful conversation and I hope our listeners find it just as insightful as I did.

Jenna Gibbs:

Thank you.

Libby Richie:

Thank you.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s it for our episode this week, big thank you to Dr. Jenna Gibbs and Libby Richie for joining me today. Their perspective on pediatric agricultural injuries highlights how preventable many incidents truly are and how education, early guidance and age-appropriate tasks can make a measurable difference for families across rural communities. Thank you for taking part in this episode in recognition of National Injury Prevention Day on November 18th. This episode was hosted and written by Lauren Lavin and edited and produced by the Plugged into Public Health student team. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook.

Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to support the podcast, please share it with your friends, colleagues or anyone interested in public health. Have a suggestion for our team? You can reach us at zph-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode is brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Until next week, stay healthy, stay curious and take care.