Family Cold and Flu Prevention: Knowledge, Behavior, and Health Outcomes

Common illnesses like colds and flus are a major problem in the United States. An average of 20,000 children under 5 years old get hospitalized for flu-related reasons in the United States every year (http://www.flu.gov/at-risk/children/).  To understand the effectiveness of common prevention tactics against this epidemic, I ask three questions. Does a parent’s knowledge of cold and flu prevention affect their child’s knowledge of cold and flu prevention? Do a parent’s preventative behaviors against colds and flus affect their child’s preventative behaviors against colds and flus? And, finally, which will minimize the likelihood of a child getting sick, a parent’s knowledge of healthy preventative behaviors or a parent actively modeling healthy preventative behaviors? I am administering a paired child-parent survey in four elementary schools in the local suburban school district. The survey, revised through cognitive interviews, and reviewed by survey research experts, school administrators, and nurses, is divided into four parts to assess knowledge of cold and flu prevention tactics, actions taken to prevent getting colds and flus, illness frequency, and demographics. The only difference between the parent and child survey is the child survey is condensed and has simpler wording. We intend to discern relationships between parent behaviors, child behaviors, and health outcomes that can be used to enhance cold and flu prevention curriculum in local schools.  Our results can be used as a baseline for designing a nation-wide survey to inform curriculum design on the prevention of common contagious illnesses.