"Getting the lead out" in Hartford, Connecticut: a multifaceted lead-poisoning awareness campaign

As part of a citywide effort to increase lead poisoning awareness within the city of Hartford, Connecticut, the Hartford Health Department implemented a multifaceted public health campaign involving several novel elements and partnerships, including the use of municipal sanitation trucks to disseminate lead-poisoning prevention messages throughout the city. To evaluate campaign reach and effectiveness, Health Department personnel collected measures of lead-poisoning knowledge, recall of campaign components, and reports of steps taken to prevent lead poisoning from 180 largely ethnic minority parents of preschool-age children. Key results were as follows: a) Recall of campaign components ranged from 21.5 to 62.6%, with newspaper advertisements and signs on buses and billboards recalled most often and a video broadcast on public-access television recalled least often. b) More than 45% of respondents reported that they took steps to prevent lead poisoning because of at least one of the campaign components, with the newspaper advertisements being the most effective component in terms of prompting lead-poisoning prevention behavior. c) Respondents' awareness was particularly low in terms of how medical personnel and procedures can and cannot detect and prevent lead poisoning in children. This campaign prompted caregivers to take steps to prevent lead poisoning and may help public health professionals in other communities to develop novel ideas through which to embark on similar initiatives.