A white-board video, focusing on providing communications tips for veterinarians surrounding a chronic dairy cow disease has just been released.
Steven Roche, who received his PhD in Population Medicine from OVC last year, hopes this innovative approach will engage farmers and veterinarians and provide a quick, easy way to highlight management practices to limit Johne’s, a chronic disease of cattle, sheep, and other ruminant animals caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium avi-um ssp. paratuberculosis (MAP).
The video is the second of three planned on the subject of Johnes Disease. The goal of the three videos is to address the three key stakeholders - producer, veterinarian, and industry.
“Motivating producers involves framing the message around their priorities, opinions and concerns,” says Roche. “It’s about understanding their mindset and then tailoring the message so it resonates with them, as opposed to blanketing the same recommendations to everyone.”
In the Veterinarians motivating change video, Jen, a bovine veterinarian, shares her story about learning to communicate better in order to motivate her dairy producer clients to make on-farm changes to prevent and control Johne’s Disease. She learns a one message fits all approach doesn’t work.
“Too often we assume that a lack of knowledge is what inhibits behaviour. It is important to note that a number of social factors, such as perceptions of risk, social pressure and expectations, priorities, personal and professional goals, all play into how an individual’s behaviour will be influenced,” adds Roche. “So we need to ask open ended questions (who, what, why, where, when, how) in order to begin to understand how these impact the producer’s behaviour.”
The original video, with Bob the Canadian dairy farmer, was released last year to spread awareness about the detection, spread and management of Johne’s Disease. The video is now available in English and French and soon to be complete in German and Italian.
The third one is planned for the agricultural industry outlining what they need to know about reaching producers on these issues.
The original video was part of a broader effort called Ontario Focus Farms (FF), a successful approach that engaged dairy farmers and veterinarians to discuss and disseminate information about Johne’s.
FF is essentially a learner-centered process, which incorporates adult learning theory within an experiential-learning framework to facilitate behavioural change. Producers engaged in four full-day sessions, where small groups discussed Johne’s Disease through a variety of lenses (e.g. veterinarian, consumer), and used a variety of learning techniques (e.g. farm tours, risk assessments, round-table discussions).
The goal was to create an educational intervention, aimed at accelerating the uptake of on-farm management practices to prevent and control Johne’s.
Cows suffering from Johne’s often don’t show any clinical signs of this chronic disease but the infection can cause decreased production in dairy cows. And it’s often referred to as an iceburg disease – farms with animals showing clinical signs will typically have many more infected animals that aren’t showing signs.