There are an estimated 800 million farmers in the People’s Republic of China and little research has been done on injuries in this population.  The rural setting, the large number of hazards, and the deficiencies in emergency care in remote areas provide an important opportunity to improve the health and safety of this important group of workers and their families.  The overall goal of this project is to increase training about and research related to farm injuries in China.  In order to achieve this goal, short-term training of Chinese scholars interested in agricultural injury research is being conducted in the United States and short-term training is being conducted in agricultural regions of China in collaboration with Injury Control Research Center at the Tongji School of Public Health, Wuhan, China, the Colorado Injury Control Research Center (CICRC) at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado and the Center for Injury Research and Policy, the Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

The long term goal of this project is to develop the expertise of Chinese scholars to address agricultural injury prevention and to develop more active research collaboration on agricultural injuries between Chinese and US scholars. The specific aims of the training project is being achieved using a mixture of training mechanisms designed for scientists who represent diverse academic disciplines. The training mechanisms include 5 day training seminars in China, web-based distance learning, and onsite learning at U.S. research institutions. Scientists from a variety of disciplines including epidemiologists, behavioral scientists, physicians, nurses, and local/state public health professionals are recruited through a candidate screening system. The first 5-day training session was held October 15-October 19, 2007 in Wuhan China.  A total of 32 middle career and senior scientists attended; many said that the workshop was the best they had attended in recent years. The first Chinese scholar receiving training in the US arrived in Colorado in April, 2008.  The second Chinese scholar is expected to arrive in May, 2008.  Both will spend six months in Colorado working with the CICRC.  Two grants were awarded in 2008 for agricultural research to be conducted in China (Cross-sectional Survey of Agricultural Injury of Farmers in Shouguang' Vegetable Base, Shandong Province China. Principal Investigator: Professor Cuizhen Wu, Department of Preventive Medicine Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine; and The Study of Association Between Alcohol and Agricultural Injury in Rural Residents of Daur nationality Habitation. Principal Investigator: Professor Limin Wang, Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Qiqihar Medical University.