The PIE Center collaborated with the Southeastern Coastal Center for Agricultural Health and Safety (SCCAHS) to host an annual virtual State of the Science Meeting in September 2020.
This meeting focused on COVID-19 as an emerging issue in agricultural health and safety, and brought together scientists, researchers, and practitioners to discuss and share information across disciplines.
State of the Science 2020 featured researchers and scientists from various fields from across the United States, who presented their findings on COVID-19 and its impact on agricultural workers and farmers and paved the way for future research collaborations that will address the long-lasting effects that this pandemic will have on the industry.
SCCAHS is the most recent center established by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) that focuses on agricultural health and safety. The SCCAHS addresses occupational safety and health needs related to agriculture, fishing and forestry in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
“For the 2020 State of the Science Meeting, we tried to connect researchers from a variety of disciplines who are working on research related to COVID-19,” said Tracy Irani, principal investigator for the center’s outreach core and chair of UF’s Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences. “These experts came from the fields of public health, economics and communication.”
Presenters at this year’s State of the Science spoke about tools, best practices, communication, extension, and economic impacts related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think the value of this event was for attendees to learn about the research that is currently being done to address COVID-19, especially as it relates to the agricultural sector.” Irani said.
Attendees included researchers and students from several states and universities, including UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
The PIE Center worked with SCCAHS to develop educational resources based on the information shared at the meeting. These resources include a white paper, educational webinars, social media messages, and an educational webpage that is available in English and Spanish.
“A white paper will be created from the SOS meeting,” said PIE Center director Ricky Telg. “The SOS speakers will also be invited to participate as speakers in the center’s monthly webinar series in 2021, which is another way the speakers will have to disseminate information about their research.”
Webinars are held monthly and feature speakers from the State of the Science Meeting to further educate the public about groundbreaking research related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The webinars we put on through the PIE Center and SCCAHS are free educational resources with all kinds of cutting-edge, relevant and applicable information.,” said Phillip Stokes, education coordinator at the PIE Center. “Our webinars are one of the ways we’re helping to communicate science to industry leaders in agriculture and natural resources with a goal to help spread accurate and credible information to help our audience make informed decisions.”
Visit https://piecenter.com/resources/webinars/ to view information related to upcoming webinars.
