"Love Your Skin": Creating Effective Public Health Messaging for the Hmong Community through an Academic-Agency Partnership

Background:

University collaboration with public health agencies is a proven effective way to connect students and faculty to real world local public health problems. The authors discovered an opportunity to further the work of an under-resourced interagency and community initiative to address the use of toxic skin lightening products in Minnesota by connecting a capstone Senior Seminar with Minnesota Department of Health and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency staff from the Mercury in Skin Lightening Products Workgroup.

Mercury is an ingredient found in skin-lightening products used by the Hmong community in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Globally, mercury is considered one of the top ten chemicals of public health concern and is commonly found in imported skin-lightening products.

Skin lightening is a ten-billion-dollar industry and is forecasted to become a $23 billion industry by 2020. Many users of skin lightening products are people of color. People of color worldwide are negatively impacted by racism and colorism and experience discrimination that privileges light-skinned people over people with darker skin.

Program background:

In an effort to increase student exposure to, and experience with applied public health concerns, the Public Health Sciences program at Hamline University, a liberal arts undergraduate institution, adapted the previous undergraduate capstone Senior Seminar with former emphasis on professional development. The Senior Seminar course collaborated with the Workgroup to address the use of toxic skin lightening products. Senior Seminar students learned how to conduct focus groups. They recruited and conducted focus group research with Hmong college students in Saint Paul because Hmong women were identified by state agencies as having elevated mercury levels as a result of skin lightening products.

Evaluation Methods and Results:

Results derived from the focus groups led to various communication methods to reach the Hmong community including a brand ‘Love Your Skin’, social media, audio public service announcements, video advertisements, and community trainings for healthcare providers, business leaders, and the general community. Students developed prototypes with the intention that the Workgroup would further refine and develop educational materials for statewide use. The students’ brand ‘Love Your Skin’ was selected by the Workgroup to be used in statewide educational materials. Students reported learning skills from the research project they never anticipated. Outcomes beyond the timeline of the course surfaced the following year. Six students and the professor co-authored a research article in Hmong Studies Journal. Three students were awarded mini-grants to conduct their own research.

Conclusions:

Academic-agency partnerships are an effective way to connect students and faculty to real world local public health problems as well as to provide additional resources to agency and community initiatives.

Implications for research and/or practice:

This presentation explores the high impact of courses with community and agency collaborations. Instructors and organizations should consider integrating a collaborative community component into the coursework to have a more memorable and meaningful impact on students and their interest in the field.