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Safety and health awareness on farms has improved, but more work needs to be done to minimize injuries and fatalities, said 2009 Stueland Scholar recipient Cheryl Tevis.

Tevis, Senior Farm Issues editor at Successful Farming magazine, made her remarks Wednesday in accepting the Stueland Scholar award at the Laird Center for Medical Research on the campus of Marshfield Clinic. The title of her talk: "Farm Safety and Health: A Grassroots Perspective."

“Farm safety and health is not a solo act,” said Tevis, who urged farm families, healthcare providers, media and researchers to continue working together to overcome tradition, economics and other challenges to safer agricultural practices.

The Stueland Scholar was established in 2001 to honor the memory of emergency medicine specialist Dean Stueland, M.D., M.P.H., former medical director of the National Farm Medicine Center and vice president of Marshfield Clinic. The award goes to an individual who has made significant contributions in the areas of emergency, agricultural and/or alcohol and drug abuse medicine.

Stueland’s wife, Marlene Stueland, and daughter, Nancy Stueland-Adamski, presented the award on behalf of their family, the National Farm Medicine Center and Marshfield Clinic.

Humberto Vidaillet, M.D., director of Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation, was a colleague of Stueland. In the program’s closing remarks, Vidaillet congratulated Tevis, saying “the work we do and the communities we serve have benefitted greatly from your work.”

The award comes just ahead of National Farm Safety and Health Week, September 20-26.

Tevis is the first non-physician/scientist to be named Stueland Scholar. For 30 years, her stories in Successful Farming (readership 1.2 million) have described the unique hazards on farms and reported on practical steps to minimize them. During that time, Tevis said readers have become increasingly safety-conscious, and will contact her if the magazine happens to run a photograph depicting a potentially unsafe practice, such as a farmer not wearing proper protective gear.

“When we first started writing about this topic we did not hear from readers in that way,” Tevis said.

Tevis authors a regular feature titled "Rural Health," the longest-running family health series in any farm publication. She also supervises a Successful Farming program that awards grants to families for specific safety projects on their farms.

Her 1989 special report, “We kill too many farm kids,” challenged traditional thinking about children in the farm worksite, and helped lay groundwork for research on injury and appropriate farm tasks for children.

Tevis’ lecture and the entire Stueland Scholar program can be viewed at http://mediasite01a.mfldclin.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=c01b6b164b844613bb624b6d69ba66d8.

The Marshfield Clinic system provides patient care, research and education with 45 locations in northern, central and western Wisconsin, making it one of the largest comprehensive medical systems in the United States.