iFish5

Personal flotation devices (PFDs) have been shown to effectively prevent deaths from falls overboard; however, there is no regulation requiring PFD use in the United States.  From 2000-2014 there were 210 man overboard fatalities in the U.S. and none of the victims were wearing a PFD when they drowned. 85% of fishermen surveyed say PFDs are fairly or very effective at preventing fatalities from falls overboard, yet only 33% report frequently or always wearing a PFD on deck. Reported barriers to use included concerns of discomfort and entanglement with fishing gear.

In 2012, NIOSH engaged community partners and a strategic communication firm to develop an intervention to overcome existing barriers and encourage PFD use among fishermen. Campaign strategy focused on common touchpoints—coordinating concentrated community, point-of-sale, and digital channels to reach the target audience where they live, work, eat, and shop. The resulting intervention, Live to be Salty, was a 2-year multi-channel campaign featuring a developed spokesman, Angus, designed to be culturally relevant, memorable, and different from typical safety messages targeted at these audiences.

A robust evaluation program was implemented to answer questions about PFD use, attitudes about man overboard risk, recognition and recall of the campaign spokesman and his message, and behavioral intention or change. Results showed an increase of 48 and 22 percentage points in message awareness among the target audiences. Nearly three-quarters of respondents felt the spokesman seemed, “like a seasoned fisherman.” 22%-40% of respondents reported taking some level of action as a result of the campaign’s message.

Attendees will learn about NIOSH’s process of conducting epidemiologic and formative research to understand the problem, developing targeted interventions in collaboration with partners, and demonstrating the effectiveness of these efforts in improving worker safety and health-what NIOSH calls “Research to Practice.”

Fishing Partnership Support Services (FPSS) integrates program design and evaluation to serve the most critical needs of the fishing community in New England. Our model employs trusted women from the fishing community as insurance Navigators, provides health interventions (e.g., vaccines and dental screenings), safety trainings, and financial planning and stress-reduction workshops. Program activities are located harborside, where fishing workers and families are. This presentation will share examples of our evaluation tools and strategies and how they have evolved.

Our developmental, participatory design of evaluation tools and integration of data into practice is innovative and challenging, with applications for other programs. Navigators enter data close to real-time in a Salesforce database, while providing direct service to families. Tensions between attention to data quality and focusing on direct service to families, while governmental reporting systems and regulations change, can be difficult. We engage our Navigators and staff as thought partners in our evaluation design. We incorporate empathy and journey mapping when we plan our measurement strategies and use a variety of techniques to foster a culture of learning with data. Internal evaluation staff conduct weekly data pulls, reviewing data monthly with Navigators and nonprofit leadership to monitor progress toward goals. We conduct surveys at safety trainings, opioid awareness, and other learning events to measure increases in knowledge, changes in attitudes, and participant feedback. Focus groups and other qualitative data help us learn from pilots and share our story. Partnerships with local universities round out our research portfolio and help enhance their understanding of the fishing community and inspire new research. Evaluators work with program staff to analyze these multiple types of data to address the FPSS learning agenda, set meaningful goals, and communicate findings. We hope examples from our evaluation practices will help other programs and evaluators maximize their learning and impact.

Training courses, designed to prepare seafarers to respond should a critical situation arise, include a range of knowledge and skill competencies. Due to infrequent requirements to perform these skills outside of training, and the importance of correct execution in critical situations, understanding the forgetting of such skills is important. For example, in fisheries, the donning of an immersion suit or properly responding to a shipboard fire are important sets of skills. Factors influencing forgetting include task difficulty, type of skill, and the specificity of training to the work domain as well as skill level attained during training, the amount of practice received and subsequent on-the-job exposure to specific skills. There are also indications that for some tasks, forgetting takes place after 6 months following initial training. To understand the process of forgetting, relearning performance (reflective of forgetting) of two equipment preparation and donning tasks within the Marine Emergency Duties refresher course context were examined. The first cohort of trainees enrolled in refresher training ranged in age from 23 to 72 years and had completed their prerequisite training 1 to 43 years prior to the refresher training. While less than 1% of trainees produced errors during the preparation and donning of an immersion suit, 58% percent of trainees produced errors during the preparation and donning of a self-contained breathing apparatus during training. It is encouraging that the mean number of errors per person was low for both tasks, however, measurement of current performance should not be interpreted as an indicator for long-term retention of the skills. Next steps should focus on understanding additional skills relevant to a fisheries context.

Regarded as one of the most dangerous industries to work in, commercial fishing is an area of utmost importance to analyze and obtain effective measures of risk reduction. The need to quantify and analyze the risk areas on-board fishing vessels has been pressed by authorities world-wide from the increasing number of injuries and fatalities in this industry. Fishing vessels are particularly known for their high levels of noise and vibrations due to their layout and relatively small size. Noise and vibration mitigation on fishing vessels impact both vessel equipment and on-board crew. Benefits of reduction include: protection of sensitive ship equipment and hydro-acoustic apparatus, low noise emitted to the water so as not to scare fish schools, low ship self-noise so as not to affect hydro-acoustic devices such as sonars and echo sounders, and increased safety of on-board crew. Fish harvesters working in these vessels are in constant prolonged exposure causing a high risk of hearing impairment and decreased comfort levels leading to an unsafe work environment.

For this reason, it is important to study ways to decrease noise and vibration levels in the design phase of a new fishing vessel. It is typical in this industry, to a certain degree, to neglect the reduction of noise and vibration from the main sources which are the propellers, main diesel engines, and various auxiliary plants. In this presentation, we will talk about effective design methods used to mitigate noise and vibration on ships that can be applied to fishing vessels. We will focus then on numerical simulations of noise and vibration on fishing vessels, as a design tool, to evaluate mitigation and optimization methods for the design of fishing vessels.