Cooperstown occupational safety and health center receives funding

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) announced it has renewed funding for Bassett Healthcare Network’s Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety: Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing (NEC) for five more years.

The funds will ensure the organization continues its mission of enhancing the safety and health of farming, forestry, and fishing industry workers by researching solutions for preventing and treating occupational injury and illness.

“This is welcome news at the NEC,” Director Julie Sorensen said in a news release. “It took our team years to collect data, work with communities to identify their health and safety priorities, look at gaps in research, and determine which approaches would best meet their needs.”

The NEC, founded in the early 1990s, conducts its mission through research, outreach, education, and clinical consultation. Projects include research studying health and safety challenges faced by members of the agricultural community to propose, test, and implement possible workplace solutions.

“Research is such an important part of what makes our center successful,” Sorensen says. “While we can provide technical assistance, training, or equipment, the workplace is constantly changing, as is the workforce. This means we constantly need to identify new and improved user-friendly, evidence-based solutions.”

The center, which operates as the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health in New York, works in 12 states from Maine to West Virginia.