Youth Living on Hispanic-Operated Farms: Injuries and Population Estimates in the U.S., 2000

Abstract

A dearth of information exists in public health surveillance on the injury burden among Hispanic farm youth in the U.S. In this study, data were collected via a telephone survey with Hispanic farm operators sampled from the 1991 Census of Agriculture active list of farms. There were an estimated 307 nonfatal injuries among an estimated 21,631 youth less than 20 years old living on Hispanic-operated farms in the U.S., 2000. Males accounted for 73% of the injuries and had an injury rate of 20.2 compared to 8.2 per 1,000 for females. Injury rates were higher for work-related incidents than for nonwork, and this relationship was true for both males and females. Work and nonwork injury rates were also similar for youth < 10 and 10-15 years old, but for youth 16-19 years of age, the risk of injury for work-related incidents was higher than for nonwork. Livestock operations had a larger number of injuries and higher injury rates compared to crop operations. These data provide previously unavailable descriptive statistics for both the nonfatal injury burden and population estimate for youth on Hispanic-operated farms.