Performing Department
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Non Technical Summary
The purpose of the Pacific Food Safety Education and Training Collaborative is to formally connect diverse communities across the vast Pacific Territories of the Western Region. The Western Regional Center to Enhance Food Safety (WRCEFS) spans all the way from Guam to east of the North American Continental Divide, encompassing tens of millions of square miles. Travel between Insular Areas, Hawai?i and the Continental U.S. is time-consuming and expensive for local residents, constraining opportunities to network, participate in training and receive technical assistance. The Collaborative would leverage the WRCEFS resources and faculty expertise to address these constraints and customize the outreach and engagement based on community needs, prior training efforts and common food safety problems faced throughout the region. Our objectives will be accomplished within a structured framework to assess, track and evaluate activities and outcomes. We have designed a program to emphasize culturally appropriate engagement that is technically relevant and readily accessible.Several food safety issues, resource barriers and technical challenges are shared throughout the Collaborative. We work in food systems that include a diverse array of specialty crops, with economically leading commodities such as berries and nuts, as well as increasing production of organic produce and RTE products. Food safety issues that have been identified as knowledge gaps in past trainings include: 1) identification and hazard assessment for high-risk foods; 2) use of sanitizers including efficacy and organic approval; 3) agricultural and processing water sanitation; 4) traceability, including the new rules on RTE products; and 5) monitoring and verification activities. Additional knowledge gaps will be assessed early in the project to ensure important topics are not excluded from the curricula and trainings.The Collaborative will include food safety experts and extension agents from Oregon State University (OSU), the University of Hawai?i at M?noa (UH), the University of Guam (UG), Northern Marianas College (NMC), American Samoa Community College (ASCC) and the University of Idaho (UI) as shown on Figure 1. To extend the reach of our work, we will recruit and engage communities and educators from Palau Community College and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). A major outcome of this proposal is to build local capacity to address food safety issues by leveraging project partners to provide technical assistance through a train-the-trainer series delivered on-line. This synchronous training series will be conducted prior to the in-person workshops. The future trainers of this series will co-instruct with the PD and co-PDs, bringing cultural fluency and local knowledge to our collective efforts. The trainers will be supported on-line, in the workshops and after the events to address technical issues from their communities. We will recruit local farmer operators, processors, packinghouse owners, food hub leaders, cooperatives and officials from agencies involved with food production and food safety regulation for the in-person workshops.
Animal Health Component
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Research Effort Categories
Basic
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Applied
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Developmental
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Goals / Objectives
The goals of this Collaborative Education and Training Project are designed to engage underserved Pacific communities in food safety education and training and address common food safety issues. A collaborative of food safety experts from Oregon State University, University of Guam, Northern Marianas College, University of Hawaii, University of Idaho and American Samoa, will partner with the Western Regional Center to Enhance Food Safety and community representatives to adapt and build educational materials and deliver trainings. We will recruit local farm operators, processors, packinghouse owners, cooperatives and extension agents across the food industry. Building on prior site visits that identified needs and knowledge gaps in FSMA and general food safety, this proposal is designed to "meet people where they are" and work with diverse participants to reduce these gaps, build resilency and develop a cadre of in-region trainers. The Collaborative proposes the following objectives: 1) Create the Pacific Food Safety Education and Training Collaborative between 1862 Institutions, Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, and multiple Pacific Insular Areas to address food safety issues; 2) Adapt existing curricula and develop new educational materials to address specific crops and cultural practices; 3) Conduct on-line train-the-trainer series, community site visits and in-person workshops with stakeholders at locations throughout the Collaborative; and 4) Evaluate the impact and utility of trainings and educational materials. These objectives are aligned with USDA's Strategic Goal 2 to ensure America's agricultural system is equitable, resilient, and prosperous and Strategic Goal 4 to provide all Americans safe, nutritious food.
Project Methods
We will target common food safety-related topics shared by the Collaborative such as agricultural and processing water quality, cleaning and sanitation on farms, hygienic practices, traceability, food safety during power outages and natural disasters, as well as topics identified in Objective 1. We will aggregate and curate existing regional training materials, Food Safety Resource (FSR) Clearinghouse materials, materials from partner organizations and WRCEFS peer-reviewed add-ons for produce safety, processing, packing and related activities, and collectively review and adapt the materials for their relevance for the proposed on-line trainings and in-person workshops. Throughout the process, we will actively engage with participants, WRCEFS, and when appropriate with Federal and State regulatory bodies in the Western region. We will also consult with others participating in similar PSA and FSPCA Preventive Controls for Human Foods training activities through the Western, Southern, North Central, and Northeast Regional Centers. In addition, we will partner with local communities to identify priority specialty crops (see Table 1 for examples) and food safety practices to address.Our plan is to deploy a hybrid model of remote and in-person trainings that accomplish two primary goals: 1) to develop a cadre of local trainers that are empowered to sustain local food safety outreach with relevant resources and additional project training over time; and 2) to conduct in-person workshops, site visits and field demonstrations with community constituents (Figure 3). The on-line train-the-trainer sessions will be delivered over a ten-week period targeting local educators in Hawai?i, Guam, CNMI, American Samoa, Palau and the FSM. The modules will be delivered synchronously by experts in the Collaborative and recorded for later viewing by participants, if needed. The modules will cover specific food safety issues identified by co-PDs and partners in the Insular Areas, as well as common food safety issues and FSMA-related content shared by the Collaborative. Key modules in the series will focus on best practices for adult continuing education, and methods to design, deliver and evaluate future trainings and workshops.The adult learning section will include approaches to create an active learning experience during workshops and emphasize best practices to overcome common learning barriers. Following the train-the-trainer series, we will host ten in-person workshops in years 2 and 3 of the project to include the participants that completed the on-line series. These in-person workshops will occur over three trips and coordinated geographically to conserve resources.Program fidelity and outcome assessments will be performed on a continuous basis and reported annually to USDA, WRCEFS and relevant participants. Using the TOP model, we will identify metrics for assessing program implementation and outcomes prior to the train-the-trainer series and in-person workshops. Process indicators aligned to program implementation and fidelity relate to resources (i.e., inputs), activities, participants, and reactions. Outcome indicators refer to desired short, medium, and long-term program outcomes. The Collaborative's outcome evaluation of project activities will focus on indicators of knowledge gain, perception change, skill development, aspirations and adoption of practices for food safety. The continuous assessment of process and outcome metrics will provide the Collaborative with valid data to demonstrate program value to communities. Both the train-the-trainer series and the in-person workshops will be evaluated through pre-/post-tests, exit surveys, and follow-up surveys. The pre-/post-tests will follow a standardized multiple-choice format used by WRCEFS. The post-test will include an additional section to gather data on participant perception of the regulations, their confidence to implement practices (i.e., skills), and their intentions to implement those practices (i.e., aspirations). Pre-tests will be administered immediately prior to the training and post-tests immediately upon completion of the training. Cross-sectional survey data will be analyzed using descriptive statistics and multivariate techniques. Follow-up surveys will be administered to both trainers and workshop participants six months after the training using Qualtrics. Follow-up surveys will gather data on medium-term outcomes related to number of people trained, adoption of food safety practices, and plans for future training. A reporting timeline to WRCEFS and USDA will be determined at project initiation.