Why the Pushback Against Trainer Continuing Education?

[Wandering Eyes]

Last month, the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) approved for public notice a proposed rule that mandates a continuing education requirement for trainers in the state looking to renew their license.

Right now, California trainers can voluntarily complete any number of available online courses. By 2020, however, they and their assistants will have to complete 12 hours of approved continuing education before their licenses are renewed, if the proposed rule is implemented.

“We talk about the art of training, but there’s a science to training as well,” said Rick Arthur, CHRB equine medical director, explaining a main thrust behind the new rule: to better disseminate a glut of emerging data behind racehorse health and safety. “What we’re trying to do is match the art and the science to make racing safer.”

Nationally, however, the roll-out of trainer continuing education is proving particularly sluggish.

Certain professions like veterinarians, physicians, and pharmacists require their members to undergo continuing education–hardly surprising, considering the life and death nature of their work. In some states, even hairstylists and cosmetologists are required to routinely brush up on their working knowledge. But only two states currently mandate the same for trainers.

And so, when the fate of horse and human rests so squarely on the decisions trainers routinely make, why has uptake of these programs been so slow? The answer to that is essentially two-fold. There have been regulatory, financial, technical and logistical obstacles, for sure. But the other belongs to an inherent tension within the industry between age-old tradition and new-age progress.

“You’re always going to have people who are resistant to it,” said Andy Belfiore, executive director of the New York Thoroughbred Horseman’s Association (NYTHA). Nevertheless, there are ways around this, she argued.

In New York, for example, where trainers must complete four hours of continuing education annually, courses have been tailored to fit their practical business needs.

“I think once people come and participate and see the information that they can garner from these seminars, they do find it useful,” Belfiore said.

The History

A concerted push towards continuing trainer education has been underway since the first Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit (WSS) in 2006, organized by the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation and the Jockey Club.

Three years later, the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) created a model rule, requiring at least four hours of continuing education for licensed trainers every calendar year. Then, in 2014, the WSS announced a partnership with the North American Racing Association (NARA) to produce an online program of “Advanced Horsemanship.”

Right now, the “Advanced Horsemanship” program links to a number of different courses which anyone, not just trainers, can register for and take. There’s a module on bisphosphonates– controversial drugs used to treat degenerative bone diseases-for example, and another on the myriad risk factors behind racehorse injury.

These interactive courses work as a series of slides, and the program monitors and tracks how registered users progress with each module. Once finished, the trainer receives a confirmation email, said Cathy O’Meara, manager of industry initiative for the Jockey Club, explaining how the individual modules work.

“The email also goes to the regulator that you choose,” O’Meara said.

Very soon, the site will also link to a variety of modules put together by the team at U.C. Davis, headed by Rick Arthur and Susan Stover, professor of anatomy at that university’s School of Veterinary Medicine. The courses are part of a larger series currently available on the U.C. Davis website.

Looking specifically at New York, trainers can fulfill their annual quota a variety of ways: courses available through the Advanced Horsemanship program; presentations given by both state equine medical director Scott Palmer and Cornell University; as well as the seminars NYTHA conducts.

“We focus a lot of what our courses cover on the business end of training,” said Belfiore about seminars, typically two to three hours long, that trainers have most positively responded to–those on Department of Labor regulations, racehorse aftercare, and workers’ compensation.

“The first one we did was a full house,” she said, about a three-hour-plus course on labor regulations. “Nobody left. Everybody stayed for the whole thing.”

New York isn’t the first state to mandate continuing education. That honor goes to Indiana, though the state repealed its rule when it came to implementation–as did South Dakota.

“I want to be very clear on one point,” wrote Larry Eliason, executive secretary of the state’s racing commission, in an email. “The problem with implementation was that no other state in our area passed the rule. We did not have any problem implementing the rule or conducting the training.”

Colorado currently requires four-hours of continuing education annually, but trainers can waive this requirement if courses aren’t available “that meet the approval of the Commission.”

The Maryland horseman’s group offers voluntary classes for trainers. Only, while the Washington HBPA and Emerald Downs management previously ran education seminars, they haven’t for the past few years due to a lack of money and manpower.

Which raises the question: why should other states follow New York’s lead and make it mandatory?

In a presentation Palmer gave at the 2015 Welfare and Safety Summit, he said that it’s not only critical the industry keeps gathering data regarding racehorse and jockey health and safety, “it’s also absolutely critical that we get that information into the hands of people that can use it.”

That’s why some of the online courses already available tackle issues central to injury prevention–like the Advanced Horsemanship module on bisphosphonates, which delves into bone remodeling, and the stresses that racehorse skeletons routinely go through.

“One thing we can’t deny is that 85 to 90% of all fatal musculoskeletal injuries occur at the site of a pre-existing injury,” Arthur said, adding that “the more dangerous jockey falls” tend to be on horses that suffer catastrophic injury.

“So, what we have to figure out is how to identify those horses before that happens,” he said. But some trainers argue that courses should have both a theoretical and practical bent.

“I think it’s a good idea to be kept abreast of things like medication reform and withdrawal times,” said trainer Michael McCarthy, who believes that topics on issues like immigration and visa issues would also be of benefit.

More broadly, however, he said that it’s important for the process to be transparent–that trainers are made aware of who’s putting together the materials, and how the content is chosen.

Jim Cassidy, president of the California Thoroughbred Trainers, agreed that continuing education is a valuable opportunity to shine a spotlight on racehorse safety. “I think it would instill in guys just how careful they’ve got to be about the way they take care of the horses…not that they aren’t now. But you just cannot take any risks.”

Still, if and when continuing education is mandated in California, there will be push-back, Cassidy conceded. “There always is, any time there’s something new,” he said, adding that “we’ve got so many rules and regulations to deal with as it is…you should see the paperwork that I have to do every day. It’s crazy.”

This view is borne out in the stats. Rick Arthur estimated that the number of trainers in California who have voluntarily undergone continuing education is in “single digits,” though he said there’s currently no way of monitoring the U.C. Davis course completion rate.

At the end of last year, New York offered a 45-day extension after “many” trainers had failed to complete the mandated four hours. According to a New York State Gaming Commission spokesperson, the commission “continues to review the completion rates for the first year.”

Nevertheless, the HBPA ran a survey in 2013 which found 87% of responders favorable towards continued education. So, are there other reasons to explain resistance from within the industry?

A number of trainers I spoke with mentioned the dry nature of the online courses. Alicia Benben, academic coordinator at NARA, said that this issue is very much on their radar.

“That’s a problem for all educators–how do I make what I’m teaching interesting and engaging?” said Benben, who acknowledged some of the stigmas attached by trainers to continuing education.

“One of the things that people thought at first was, ‘They’re trying to teach me how to train,'” she said. “And that’s not at all the goal. We’re just looking to provide knowledge and information that perhaps wasn’t previously known.”

Then there’s the technical and logistical obstacles faced at the regulatory level. The Advanced Horsemanship website wasn’t yet up and running when Indiana tried to implement its continuing education program, which closely resembled the ARCI’s model rule. And so, Indiana designed and ran seminars in the spring and fall for trainers to attend in person.

Through fear, however, that Indiana would scare away those trainers unable to attend the seminars–and thus, unable to fulfill their yearly requirement for licensing–the new rule was eventually abandoned, said Joe Gorajec, former executive director of the Indiana Horse Racing Commission.

“This is one of the few rules that really needs buy-in from all the states, or almost all the states, to work,” he said.

Continuing Education Moving Forward

But now, of course, with the Advanced Horsemanship program up and running–which it has been for about four years–the need for each state to develop their own programs and materials has been diminished, said O’Meara. “All the push back from regulators has been, ‘Well, there’s no central resource of information and no way of tracking whether the trainers take it,'” she said. “That’s no longer the case.”

And there are other ways to circumvent the problem of a patchwork set of requirements for trainers starting horses in multiple jurisdictions. New York, for example, offers a waiver to trainers who started fewer than 12 horses the prior year.

Those responsible for putting together course content all discussed the need to produce materials in Spanish, as well as the need to routinely update and refresh what’s on offer. That’s why the U.C. Davis crew will continue to “add about a half-hour every month,” to the materials already in place, said Arthur, who mentioned future courses on biosecurity and pharmacology.

Mirroring Arthur’s words, O’Meara talked about adding content to the Advanced Horsemanship website that could tackle things like small business training, human resources, and immigration.

In Belfiore’s eyes, continued education could be extended to owners, too.

“Any time you can educate your stakeholders,” she said, “that’s going to make your business stronger.”

 

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