Longitudinal qualitative study reports limited media-advocacy engagement in agricultural safety program

A longitudinal qualitative study of members of an agricultural safety and health implementation team found that team members were positive about media advocacy as an intervention but generally showed limited engagement with the project. Their accounts also identified political and power conditions in each implementation setting as making implementation difficult. Because the available evidence is limited to the study abstract, the findings describe the participating team and cannot establish how the experience compares with other agricultural safety programs.

The researchers studied partner engagement with media advocacy as an implementation strategy for a workplace safety and health program. Members of the implementation team were interviewed at two time points. The first interviews took place after they had been trained in and had worked to develop media-advocacy strategies, but before media-advocacy campaigns began. Follow-up interviews were conducted two years after campaign launch and shortly before the end of the funded study period. The abstract does not report the number of interviewees, the specific agricultural settings, or details of the campaigns, so the scope of the sample and the extent to which the results can be generalized remain unclear.

At follow-up, team members described the intervention as difficult to implement because of the political and power contexts within their respective settings. Their generally limited engagement limited fidelity to media-advocacy principles. The researchers also identified cognitive dissonance in the interviews: team members praised individual components of media advocacy while continuing to reject media advocacy as an overall strategy. These are reported qualitative observations from the implementation team; the study did not quantify engagement or establish a causal effect of the political and power conditions on implementation.

The authors emphasized the potential influence of cognitive biases on team development and collaboration. Based on the study findings, they recommend substantial investment in team development before implementation efforts begin. That recommendation is grounded in the experiences reported by this implementation team rather than evidence that earlier team development would improve safety outcomes. The abstract does not assess changes in worker injuries, health outcomes, policy adoption, or the effectiveness of the media-advocacy campaigns themselves, and no such benefits should be inferred from the reported implementation experience.

Subject of Research: Partner engagement and implementation fidelity in a media-advocacy-based agricultural safety and health program

Article Title: Breaking from tradition: embracing new strategies to implement agricultural safety and health programs

Article References: Milkovich, P. J., Johnson, A., & Sorensen, J. A. (2026). Breaking from tradition: embracing new strategies to implement agricultural safety and health programs. BMC Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-026-29961-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-026-29961-y

Keywords: agricultural safety, occupational health, media advocacy, partner engagement, implementation fidelity, qualitative study, team development, cognitive dissonance, workplace safety, public health, Breaking, tradition