The National Centre for Farmer Health provides national leadership to improve the health, safety and well-being of farm men and women, farm workers, their families and communities across Australia.
The Centre is a partnership between Western District Health Service and Deakin University and is based in Hamilton, Victoria.
Five Service Elements
The Centre delivers a five pronged program which includes provision of training at the grass roots level, development and delivery of post graduate education for health and other rural professionals, provision of quality grounded agri-health programs, continued service provision and the collection of high quality data to provide a sound and growing evidence base.
The five service elements are:
1. Professional Training and Development
2. Applied Research and Development
3. IT Information Hub
4. AgriSafe Programs
5. Sustainable Farm Families™
Professional Training and Development
Education is one of the primary aims of the National Centre for Farmer Health (NCFH). It is of key importance to improve the health, safety and wellbeing of farm men, women and children.
NCFH in partnership with Deakin University offer postgraduate units:
• HMF701 (Agricultural Health and Medicine) and
• HMF702 (Healthy and Sustainable Agricultural Communities)
The course is suitable for rural professionals, health professionals, health care administrators and policy makers. Both units are focussed on greatly enhancing the knowledge of the physical and mental health issues facing today’s rural and remote communities by undertaking this unit.
Graduate Certificate in Agricultural Health and Medicine
The Graduate Certificate of Agricultural Health and Medicine (GCAHM) is a new course at Deakin that delivers specialist knowledge and skills to students currently employed, or wishing to gain employment, in rural and remote health-related professions. This course aims to provide you with the necessary tools and knowledge to improve the social, physical and mental health of agricultural workforces across Australia. HMF701 and HMF702 are core units of the Graduate Cert. Visit the Education centre.
Applied Research and Development
NCFH focuses on areas where research can make a difference in reducing disease and injury among farm men and women, agricultural workers and their families. One of the primary goals is to further investigate the identified health issues from earlier research and develop interventions that positively impact the lives of Australian farmers. Visit the Research centre
IT Information Hub
The Farmer Health website’s key objective is to increase knowledge transfer across the target groups of farmers, rural professionals, academics and students.
Visit our website at http://www.farmerhealth.org.au
AgriSafe™ Programs
AgriSafe offers you the opportunity to meet with trained agricultural health clinicians for a comprehensive health check for free. For more information download the brochure or ring reception.
Sustainable Farm Families™
The vision for the Sustainable Farm Families™ program is to improve the health, well-being and safety of farm families. The health and safety of farmers is a major issue facing agricultural business because farmers are:
• Getting older
• Working harder and longer
• Relying more on family members for extra labour
• Experience high injury rates, illness and early death.
The Sustainable Farm Families™ (SFF) program aims to address the health, well being and safety issues facing farming industries through a sustainable and evidence-based health promotion program with solid research and cross-sector collaboration.
The Sustainable Farm Families™ program encourages farmers to view farm family health as part of the ‘triple bottom line’ of farm reporting. Simply put, this refers to ‘people, planet and profit’ – all three are dependent on each other for success and sustainability. Visit SFF