Photo by Kris Todd Kristi Fisher, who serves as the program services director for the AgriSafe Network, stands beside a few of the respiratory protection items available to today's farmers, farm workers and farm family members.

Kristine "Kristi" (Harves) Fisher knows from personal experience that farming is an ambitious occupation and offers a rewarding lifestyle. The AgriSafe Network program services director also knows that farmers, their families and farm workers encounter unique health and safety exposures every day.

Although not an actual farmer herself today, the rural Clay County native is working hard to communicate an illness and injury prevention message via AgriSafe clinics and clinicians, who provide both preventive health services and educational programs.

The AgriSafe network of clinics was a dream envisioned by Dr. Kelley Donham, director of Iowa's Center for Agricultural Safety and Health (I-CASH), in 1987 when five Iowa hospitals aligned to develop a standardized rural occupational health service for farming communities. Awarded non-profit status in 2003, the national membership organization represents a network of agricultural health and safety professionals today who assure access to preventive services for farm families and members of the agricultural community.

Health screenings for hearing, lung function, blood pressure, cholesterol, skin assessments, tetanus immunizations and cholinesterase are among the agricultural services offered at clinics. AgriSafe clinics, which are deemed official providers of the Certified Safe Farm program, and the local clinicians in them also conduct farm safety reviews, educational programs, farm safety day camps, and personal protective equipment selections, fittings and sales.

"We require our clinicians to go through a 40-credit hour training," Fisher explained. "...Our focus is on the provider. We train them and then they go back to their local organizations, which then take on the financial responsibilities of budgeting enough dollars to do either a whole department or fit into somebody's regular occupational duties."

While each local clinic is organized differently, the AgriSafe program services director noted, "It's a joy for me in trying to get what fits each community. Some of my primary job is to keep encouraging them (the AgriSafe Network clinicians) that they're doing the right thing and they're not the only one out there doing this."

Fisher, who works either from her rural Dickens home or wherever her laptop is, thoroughly enjoys her "jack-of-all-trades" job. Besides working on her organization's Web site, arranging conference calls and focus groups, interacting with farm families and doing outreach for AgriSafe clinicians, Fisher passes along the "success stories" of farm safety and health advocates. In addition to the number of tales she can tell of farmers who have caught heart or respiratory diseases through AgriSafe screenings, a current favorite success story of Fisher's involves an Ida Grove man who was told that he had to quit his job. However, after being equipped with a special respirator unit with an air purifying piece, he continues to be able to work in his hog confinement today.

"My personal success story, and probably the reason why I got into this, is my dad, (Richard Harves)," she confided. "He was diagnosed with cancer, soft tissue sarcoma, my senior year in high school. It was one of those cancers they somewhat link to 2,4-D. ... He did -- and still does -- a lot of the protective things we recommend. For example, he made us wear sunscreen and gloves. So, I did grow up with several of the safety things I talk about every day, but the protective equipment we currently have wasn't available back then."

While Fisher suggests respiratory, chemical, protective equipment, sun safety and hearing prevention tips are the top concepts addressed by AgriSafe representatives today, she adds the allergies she battles are one reason she didn't pursue farming as a vocation. The 33-year-old also chose to follow her parents' suggestion to focus on the health field while enrolled as a student at Iowa State University, where Fisher majored in community health education.

Although she had originally planned to pursue a career in physical therapy, Fisher followed AgriSafe Clinical Director Carolyn Sheridan's suggestion to work with Donham at I-CASH for her final internship project. Fisher, in turn, completed her undergraduate work with Donham at the University of Iowa and then began graduate school at the University of Iowa's former College of Preventive Medicine and Environmental Health.

While Fisher and her husband, Dr. Brian Fisher, lived in Davenport, he attended Palmer College of Chiropractic and she drove to work in Iowa City every day.

"It was an incredible blessing to be able to move back home and to be close to the farm," she said.

The couple, along with their four children -- Nate, 8, Elisa, 6, Brenna, 4, and Luke, 2 -- currently lives eight miles north of her parents' farm, which is managed by Fisher's grandfather, father and younger sister, Steph Essick.

Fisher smiled as she reported it can be "challenging" to step onto the family farm today.

"I try and instill all the rules that I recommend to everybody every day. But my dad and sister do tease me at times, saying, 'Here comes safety girl. Let's get our masks on.'

"I think it, hopefully, reminds them that they do need them," Fisher reciprocated. "I have seen changes in them. They've also realized, just like all the other farmers we work with do, that they (protective equipment and preventive practices) do work. ... We have seen changes in the farmers we've been able to reach. And, we definitely do have repeat customers, which is awesome for our clinicians to see as well."

Tomorrow's "Women in Agriculture" series article will feature Melanie Bloom, the Sioux Central agricultural education instructor and FFA advisor.