Workers on prison farms in the United States commonly grow produce and row crops and raise livestock. Teaching good agricultural practices to prisoners and prison staff increases the safety of the food produced and reduces the likelihood of an illness outbreak. We developed a food safety curriculum for use on prison farms in Iowa. In developing…

To assist Extension professionals working in Texas's Little River Watershed with efforts to educate landowners about reducing amounts of bacteria there, we assessed motivations for and barriers to landowners' adopting best management practices (BMPs). We surveyed 275 landowners in the watershed. Respondents were at least somewhat familiar with…

The concept of a "healthful home" offers the basis for a comprehensive approach to addressing the well-established relationship between health and housing. Many environmental health hazards found in homes--such as lead, mold, environmental tobacco smoke, and pesticides--can be reduced or eliminated through the use of scientifically…

UMaine Cooperative Extension is the primary educational delivery organization for pesticide recertification credits in Maine. Shrinking budgets and staff numbers are making traditional face-to-face delivery increasingly difficult to maintain. To address this issue, on-line pesticide applicator recertification training credits were developed. The…

Adobe® Captivate software provides educators with a tool to create interactive distance learning modules. This article describes how Adobe® Captivate was used to increase engagement of volunteer learners. An Adobe® Captivate module was created for the University of Idaho Master Gardener program to educate and test new Master Gardener volunteers on…

Colorado State University Extension in Chaffee and Park Counties conducted numerous outreach educational activities between 2007 and 2010. A follow-up evaluation was conducted to determine whether one outreach activity was more effective at encouraging individuals to test their homes for radon or to mitigate their homes. Participants in the…

Operation Cleansweep is a free pesticide disposal program that has operated in Florida since 1995. The program is open to commercial facilities, including agricultural production establishments, golf course operators, and pest control companies. Since its inception, the program has had more than 1,700 participants and collected more than 1,000,000…

Migrant and seasonal farmworkers are typically Spanish-speaking, Latino immigrants with limited formal education and low literacy skills and, as such, are a vulnerable population. We describe the development of the "Pesticides and Farmworker Health Toolkit", a pesticide safety and health curriculum designed to communicate to farmworkers…

Extension is focusing on healthy homes programming. Extension educators are not qualified to diagnose consumers' medical problems as they relate to housing. We cannot give medical advice. Instead, we can help educate consumers about home conditions that may affect their well-being. Extension educators need appropriate healthy homes tools to…

This article connects Extension education and the Healthy Homes Initiative. Background on housing research and education is provided in the context of four issues (toxic materials, dangerous gases, hazards related to asthma, and other residential hazards). The federally funded Healthy Homes Partnership is described, and implications for…

Operation Cleansweep is a free pesticide disposal program that has operated in Florida since 1995. The program is open to commercial facilities, including agricultural production establishments, golf course operators, and pest control companies. Since its inception, the program has had more than 1,700 participants and collected more than 1,000,000…

An extension project sold 4,000 radon kits; 46% were returned for testing and 23% of homes were at risk. Interviews with 100 of those at risk found that only 41% believed they had a problem; women and college graduates were more likely than men and high school graduates to believe it. Of those who believed they had a problem, only 63% took any…

Community right-to-know legislation is increasing access to information about hazardous substances and community health and safety. Extension educators can help citizens obtain and interpret this information and take appropriate community action. (SK)