Abstract

In 2004, an epidemiologic study of 200 000 farm families yielded an annual estimate of 592 000 injury deaths and 3 490 000 permanent disabled individuals in rural areas of China. Injury control and prevention has only recently been included in curriculum at a few universities, with even fewer focusing on agricultural injuries. The specific aims of the USA–China Agricultural Injury Research Program are: (1) to provide training to Chinese scholars on issues critical for reducing agricultural injuries; (2) to expand collaborative research activities between the Colorado Injury Control Research Center, the Center for Injury Research and Policy at The Ohio State University, the Tongji Injury Control Research Center and other researchers in China; and (3) to provide training and continue development of human subjects research ethics. The long term goal of the project is to increase training and research related to agricultural injuries in China in order to develop an infrastructure for future sustainable agricultural injury research. The programme provides short term training in China and trained 79 mid level and senior researchers in 2007–2009. Scholars attending the short courses are invited to apply for further training in the USA and to date five Chinese researchers have spent between 3 and 12 months in the USA furthering their training. A total of seven agricultural injury research projects have been funded by the training programme. The presentation will provide a description of the findings from the research and evaluation results from the training programme.