#PassOnPackets: A Case Study of Injury Prevention Research Storytellers Coaching Pediatric Trainees to Advocate and Communicate Effectively on Behalf of Children

Background:

Parents frequently cite their pediatrician as their most trusted source of health information for their children, but pediatricians aren’t always educated on how/to communicate injury prevention messages to their patients or the public. We sought both to educate and empower medical students, residents, and fellows and teach them how to advocate on behalf of children. Through this program, they learned about an important child injury prevention topic and were asked to share what they learned and their support of the call to action by pitching and talking to the media and sharing on social media and through interpersonal communication.

Program background:

Our pediatric injury research center partnered with various groups within the American Academy of Pediatrics (e.g., communications, social media, and policy staff; Section on Medical Students, Residents and Fellowship Trainings; and Council on Injury Violence and Poison Prevention) to choose dates and injury prevention topics on which to focus. Together, we developed a unified call to action, a day of action, and materials (e.g., social media images and posts, presentations for morning/noon report, data) to disseminate throughout the day of action. From past outreach and research, we understand the importance of having everyone speak with a unified voice and seeing information about the same topic presented from a variety of sources on the same day, and teaching others how to engage in a topic through whatever means they are comfortable and able (e.g., media, social media, interpersonal communication).

Evaluation Methods and Results:

Our first intervention saw participation from 32 resident programs across the country, 500+ tweets using our day of action hashtag, 8,000+ Facebook impressions on a post, 1,600+ readers on a blog post, 700+ clicks on a bit.ly link, and a couple local news stories. A Twitter chat we hosted on the day of action had 2.8 million timeline deliveries, and a reach of 550,000+ from 820 tweets and 216 unique contributors. Nearly 87% of participants said the event was successful or somewhat successful at their institution, 80% said communication from campaign leaders worked incredibly well or well, and 87% said the data, graphics, and instructions we provided prepared them incredibly well or well. Participants provided meaningful feedback which we’re implementing for our second intervention and all participants indicated interest in participating in a similar event in the future. Our second intervention will take place in May 2019 and we look forward to sharing those results in August.

Conclusions:

As injury prevention message makers and research story tellers, we want our messages to be disseminated not only broadly but also accurately and through respected channels. By giving pediatricians the health communication and advocacy tools they need while they are still in training, we hope to impact their future practice, patient relationships, and ultimately prevent child injuries.

Implications for research and/or practice:

We will continue these collaborative outreach campaigns for as long as they continue to be successful. Campaigns are currently scheduled for May and November, 2019. Future opportunities include mini days of action for emerging or trendy injury prevention topics.