Matt Keifer, MD, MPH, the Dean Emanuel Endowed Chair and Senior Research Scientist at the National Farm Medicine Center (NFMC) has been named the Director of NFMC. Dr. Keifer joined MCRF in August 2010 from his position as associate director of the Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center at the University of Washington, where he conducted research and provided clinical services for Spanish-speaking farm workers.
Barb Lee, RN, PhD will continue on as a Senior Research Scientist and Director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) funded Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health & Safety. “MCRF is grateful to Dr. Lee for serving as Director of NFMC for the past 11 years,” says Richard Leer, MD, MCRF Interim Director.
Dr. Keifer is a bilingual occupational medicine physician with extensive clinical, research, and programmatic expertise in agricultural health and safety. His professional efforts for the past 20 years have largely focused on Hispanic farmworkers, both in the United States and in Latin America. His research and practice emphasize pesticide health effects and agricultural injury. In conducting research, he is continuously involved in assessing the health and safety conditions of workplaces, the effectiveness of workplace practices, the needs of workers, the health impacts of workplace conditions and practices and the impact of health and safety policies on worker health. He currently serves as the co-director of the NIOSH-funded Upper Midwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center.
In clinical practice, he attended the University of Washington Occupational Medicine Clinic and the Yakima Valley Farmworkers Clinic in Washington. He continues to practice in the Marshfield Occupational Health Department and the Farming, Agriculture and Rural Medicine Clinic (FARM). In this capacity he regularly visits agricultural worksites to assess his patients’ working conditions.
Dr. Keifer currently serves on the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) committee to the Office of Pesticide Programs and has also spearheaded efforts within the American Public Health Association to adopt policy resolutions supporting the protection of agricultural workers. He recently served on an Institute of Medicine committee to strengthen occupational health in electronic health records. He served as the medical officer of an integrated pest management project in Nicaragua for two years, where he trained field staff and clinicians in the diagnosis and management of pesticide poisonings. He has trained health promoters in his work in Nicaragua and his projects in Idaho and Yakima. He has developed innovative training programs aimed at training health professionals on agricultural health and safety issues, funded by the Certification and Worker Protection Branch, Office of Pesticide Programs - US Environmental Protection Agency.
This content was provided by the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation newsletter. Contributors: Ingrid Glurich, Jeanette Normington, & Dixie Schroeder. Edited by: Richard Leer, MD & Bobbi Bradley, MPH, bradley.bobbi@mcrf.mfldclin.edu,