The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing Centers (AFF Centers) were established as part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)/NIOSH Agricultural Safety and Health Initiative in 1990. The initiative established a network of centers, funded on a competitive basis every 5 years, to reduce work-related injuries, illnesses and deaths among agricultural workers, as well as farm family members (CDC/NIOSH, 2014). Farming, fishing and forestry are the most dangerous occupations in the U.S. In 2018, the injury and illness rate in the AFF sector was the highest among all occupations. Fatalities among farmers are 7 times higher than in other occupations, 22 times higher among fisherman and 28 times higher among loggers (BLS, 2018). Estimates of the economic cost of work-related fatalities, injuries and illnesses reached as high as $2.2 trillion in the U.S. from 2007 to 2015 (Felknor, et al. 2019).

Each AFF Center serves a multi-state region and has its own portfolio of research projects and outreach programs that address emerging and persistent issues (CDC/NIOSH, 2014). Although worker populations and agriculture commodities vary in different regions of the country, areas of overlap in agricultural safety and health research and outreach exist across the Centers. In 2013, a collaboration between nine AFF Centers and the National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety began with a goal of establishing 21^st century outreach and training solutions. The concept of developing an AFF Centers’ YouTube Channel was born out of this collaboration.

YouTube was developed by three PayPal employees in May 2005. This social media platform immediately became popular with over 1 million views by November 2005 (Allocca, 2018). In 2006, Google acquired YouTube and has managed the tools and resources since that time. Over 500 videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute and the site logs approximately 1 billion viewers each day (Statistica, 2019 August). Statistica also reports that in 2019, 58% of adults over age 56 and 81% of those aged 15–25 used YouTube over a quarterly reporting period that year, outstripping Facebook as the social media platform of choice. The videos were primarily used to acquire informative content (Statistica, 2019 July). Four features that have led to the popularity of YouTube include: 1) It is free; no payment for any content is required, 2) The platform easily uploads user-generated content, 3) As a social network of users and content, the platform creates opportunities for Communities of Practice to evolve and 4) It has structures that support branding such as channels that customize and index content to developers and users (Tan, 2013).

Providing educational opportunities and training to agriculture, forestry and fishing workers and their stakeholders, who often live in rural and remote locations, can be problematic due to factors including distance and time constraints. Research in the U.S. found that YouTube is accessed by 79% of those in rural regions (Statista, 2019 March), making YouTube an effective means of reaching this target population.

As a social media platform, YouTube can be considered useful for both formal and informal learning (Greenhow & Lewin, 2015). Formal learning is characterized through location and form of instruction and is generally defined as that instruction that occurs in more institutionalized educational settings such as schools, universities, training centers or industrial programs. Informal learning typically occurs as a learner explores a need independently, seeking out resources and considering information on an ‘as needed’ basis. Farmers often seek out resources in informal settings as well as attending formal trainings provided by cooperative extension or insurance companies (Burgus and Duysen, 2017). Providing resources that can be used in both settings extends reach and engages audiences in communities of practice and dialogue.

Research on the effectiveness of learning using video content is extensive (Kay, 2012; Allen and Smith, 2012; Lloyd and Robertson, 2012; Rackaway, 2012; Hsin and Cigas, 2013). It has been found that multi-modal content is engaging, memorable and can build background knowledge on a topic and often improves learning regardless of education or literacy level and improves outcomes for those for whom English is not their first language. Importantly, research from deKoning et al. (2009) noted that video and animation improve learners’ ability to retain and transfer new knowledge to novel situations (Mayer, 2008).

The rationale for the AFF Centers’ collaborative to create a YouTube channel, targeting agriculture, forestry and fishing workers and stakeholders, was that it would provide a convenient and cost-effective online environment to disseminate quality health and safety video content with the likelihood of widespread dissemination. Many of the AFF Centers had already created safety and health videos and were hosting them on their websites or a YouTube channel. This collaborative project offered the opportunity to house all these videos on one site and support an aggregated dataset to track the cross-center use of their AFF health and safety resources.

This paper discusses the collaborative process of building a unified YouTube channel to address the ongoing need to provide safety information and training to agricultural populations throughout the regions served by the AFF Centers.

U.S. Agricultural Safety and Health Centers YouTube Channel URL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRgk3ryTcY8Wcvvv_ulZgmA

The development of the U.S. Agricultural Centers’ YouTube Channel provided opportunities for collaboration and synergy among the NIOSH AFF Centers across regions serving various agricultural operations and industry sectors. This national collaboration was made easier and more cost effective in the last decade by advances in availability of remote connections, technology and social media platforms. Importantly, digital video content provides a much-needed resource to reach at-risk farmers, fishers and loggers with clear information on safe and healthy farm practices and address the burden of high injury and fatality rates in agriculture, fishing and forestry.

Over a six-year period the channel grew from 48 videos to 125 videos with over 10,500 cumulative watch time hours. In depth analysis of the channel’s reach, video use and additional viewer demographics will be reported in upcoming publications.

Males between 25–34 years old are overwhelmingly the largest group of viewers on the AFF Centers’ channel. This age-demographic aligns with that reported for the YouTube audience worldwide. The largely male viewership of the AFF Center channel (82.7% male) is in contrast to Pew Research in 2019 that indicated YouTube viewership is equally split between males and females (https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/social-media/). This discrepancy is likely reflective of the larger number of males working in agriculture (NASS, 2017). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Highlights/2019/2017Census_Female_Producers.pdf

YouTube video views, as shown in Table 2, reflect how many times a video link has been clicked. Views can be an important measure of a video’s overall popularity but perhaps a more important metric is the watch time hours as it is reflective of viewer engagement. While the number of views on the AFF Centers’ channel year grew substantially from 2014 – 2017, this number leveled off from 2017–2019. In contrast the watch time hours continued to increase when compared to the previous year. These data suggest that the videos on the AFF Centers’ channel are engaging viewers longer, but with a static number of views. Improvements in marketing the channel and promoting new videos could improve both of these metrics.

YouTube subscribers are individuals who choose to follow a channel and content so that they can stay updated with the latest videos. The addition of new AFF channel subscribers each year has ranged from a high of 273 in 2017–2018, to a low of 83 in 2014–2015. Subscriptions keep the target audience aware of new safety and health videos being added and serve as a reminder to use the resource.

The addition of new videos to the channel has decreased significantly since the initial launch of the channel in 2013–2015. This is indicative of the Centers adding their pre-existing videos at the onset and then having to produce new videos, which can be a time-consuming and costly endeavor. To continue to have a valuable channel, new subscribers must be recruited, and new videos need to be created and effectively marketed.

In order to provide agricultural safety and health information to non-English speaking agricultural communities, AFF Centers added Spanish and K’iche language videos to the AFF Centers’ channel. Eight of the top 30 videos, ranked by watch time hours, are Spanish language videos (Table 3), demonstrating the need to provide educational resources and training in Spanish. Additional non-English language videos are continually sought from the AFF Centers.

Many of AFF Centers’ YouTube channel videos are used during formal worker trainings including: grain bin entry, EPA pesticide training (English and Spanish), and dairy working training (English and Spanish), likely accounting for these videos having consistently high watch time hours (Table 3). When used for trainings it is likely that videos are watched to completion, examples are the Spanish language pesticide safety videos that has an average watch time of 9:29 min, significantly higher than the median watch time of videos (excluding gaming videos) of that length of 5:20 minutes. (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/04/10-facts-about-americans-and-youtube/) On the YouTube platform, success breeds success. YouTube will place videos with high watch time hours into the thumbnail feed that appear as “suggested videos” on a viewer’s screen. YouTube users in the U.S. (81%) said in a 2018 Pew Research survey that they at least occasionally watch the videos suggested by the platform’s recommendation algorithm.

(https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/11/07/many-turn-to-youtube-for-childrens-content-news-how-to-lessons/)

Regardless of the popularity of any online social platform, access to the internet and broadband service, especially in rural areas where agricultural operations and farmers are located, remains a concern. However, while there still exists a digital divide between urban/suburban residents and their rural counterparts, that gap is narrowing. From 2002 to 2018 internet use in rural communities has grown from 42% to 78%; home broadband has risen from 2% in 2001 to 63% in 2019 (Pew Research Center Survey on Internet Use, 2018). Regardless of on-farm access or type of service, many agencies that provide frequent contact, support and training for farmers such as agricultural cooperative extension and Departments of Agriculture have high speed access and are often consumers of YouTube content for training and information that can be used during face to face farm visits or cooperative extension office training. Additionally, YouTube content can be downloaded and re-used as needed.

Promoting and marketing the AFF Centers’ YouTube channel is an ongoing process. Using links to the videos on social media and in educational flyers during national agricultural safety and health initiatives has shown to be a successful way of bringing viewers to the channel (Figure 3). Providing educators, trainers and safety professionals with these resources will further increase viewership and reach of this channel. The pop-up survey that was conducted over a two-year period demonstrated satisfaction with the channel and valuable recommendations for future videos.

Although the development of a YouTube Channel may not be novel, a national systematic collaboration to centralize agricultural health and safety video content proved to be an innovative strategy for disseminating quality educational resources. Each AFF Center benefitted from increased exposure of their content and the collaboration provided an opportunity to achieve labor efficiencies. The centers also took advantage of the free metrics provided by YouTube to monitor and evaluate usage over time and during targeted activities, e.g., promotional campaigns. The metrics demonstrated that coordinated marketing increases views, watch time and subscriptions. In addition, the success of the channel communicates the benefits to collaboration among organizations with comparable goals.