The Wisconsin Rural Firefighters Delivering Agriculture Safety and Health (RF-DASH) at the National Farm Medicine Center (NFMC) at the Marshfield Clinic
In 2020, there were approximately 676,900 volunteer firefighters in the US, and 95% of those serve communities smaller than 25,000 people and half of those serve communities less than 2,500. Wisconsin has over 20,000 volunteer firefighters serving 769 fire departments. The Rural Firefighters Delivering Agriculture Safety and Health (RF-DASH) program is a training program designed to motivate and prepare rural firefighters to respond to farms and ranches in their area, mitigate likely agents of injury and/or property loss on those operations, and prepare families and coworkers as first responders.
Since 2016, the program has formally trained 103 trainers in 11 US states and 5 provinces with widespread impact. For example, 23 Wisconsin-based trainees have trained 438 other emergency professionals and/or farmers. From this, we estimate that the 103 fire/EMS trainers have reached between ~2,000 first responders in the year following their training: ~1500 fire/EMS personnel; ~200 educators and students; ~150 community members; and ~100 farmers. The extensive reach of RF-DASH is due to the train-the-trainer model, by which trainees disseminate trainees to others with the continued support of the staff at NFMC.
Through CTSA support, RF-DASH has doubled the program size, reaching 633 to 1,131 new individuals in the state of Wisconsin, most of whom will be rural firefighters, and is well-positioned to reach 10% of the state’s volunteer firefighters.