Up and Away–Child Care Provider Component Launches

The Campaign’s Newest Outreach

Research reveals that 78 percent of parents with a child 4-years-old or younger who attends a day care center would like to receive information on their child’s development from their day care provider.  With approximately 50 percent of U.S. children in day care or preschool, child care providers are an important audience for the campaign.

To reach this audience, we teamed up with the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and unveiled brand new child care provider materials at its annual conference, held in Atlanta November 8–11, 2006.

Nearly 1,700 Child Care Provider Resource Kits were ordered or distributed at the “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” campaign booth.  The new Child Care Provider Resource Kit includes:

• A CD-ROM with fact sheets about developmental milestones and developmental delays;
• Tips on talking to parents about child development and a list of resources for child care providers;
• A developmental milestones checklist template; and
• Flyers, growth charts, and posters to be used in the classroom.

Capping the launch at NAEYC, Child Care Provider Outreach Week – “A Season to be Thankful”–was held November 13–17, 2006.  More than 60 campaign champions and partners from 24 states participated in distributing flyers to child care providers in their local communities.

To learn more about child care provider outreach or to order kits, please visit www.cdc.gov/actearly

Autism Awareness Month

April is National Autism Awareness Month, and the campaign continues outreach to parents, health care professionals, and child care providers.  We dedicated April 16-20 to “Working Together–Helping Children Reach Their Full Potential.”  During this week, campaign champions were encouraged to reach out in their communities with campaign flyers to help raise awareness of the importance of monitoring a child’s developmental milestones.

Additionally, in the spirit of working together, health care professionals and child care providers received a special e-card, thanking them for their efforts in helping make the campaign a success and inviting them to share their successes with us.
 
If you are interested in reaching out to individuals in your community, visit the website www.cdc.gov/actearly to learn how you can get involved.

Health Care Professionals:
2006 Year End Wrap-Up

With campaign team members attending 12 conferences and reaching nearly 36,000 health care professionals, the 2006 health care professional conference season was a great success.  Here’s what one attendee had to say:

“Thank you so much for your participation in the ‘SPN 2006 The Magic of Pediatric Nursing Conference’ in Orlando. Your support helped to make our program a huge success.”

– Society of Pediatric Nurses board member

Take a look at the conferences the campaign had a presence in during 2006.

• American Academy of Family Physicians
• National Association of Hispanic Nurses
• American Academy of Nurse Practitioners
• American Academy of Nursing
• American Academy of Pediatrics
• American Academy of Physician Assistants
• National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners
• National Black Nurses Association
• Pediatric Academic Societies
• Society of Pediatric Nurses
• Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs
• National Public Health Information Coalition

We’ve planned our 2007 conference attendance.  See the “On the Horizon” section of this issue for more exciting details!

Results from National Public Health Center Outreach

The campaign is increasing its work to reach parents and young children who rely on public health facilities for primary care.  The campaign conducted targeted outreach to public health organizations around the country that serve parents of children who are medically underserved, uninsured, or underinsured, or who live in rural areas with limited access to private providers. 

More than 7,500 families received campaign information at public health centers during National Public Health Center Week.  Campaign materials were distributed to a total of 30 centers in 18 states for events that included health fairs, open houses, and children’s fairs that took place during the week-long celebration.  During this week,

• The Office of Minority Health distributed campaign materials to 12,000 individuals during its nationwide health fairs targeting the Hispanic community.
• The National Center for Education in Maternal Health included the campaign’s link and information in its online catalog.
• The National Healthy Mothers and Healthy Babies Coalition included the campaign information in its e-newsletter, Monday Morning Memo, which is distributed to about 200 organizations.

Engaging the Hispanic Community

With a goal of reaching all parents across the nation, the campaign recently targeted its efforts within the Hispanic community, the fastest growing minority group in the United States.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 9.5 million Hispanic families reside in the United States.

In November 2006, pediatrician and former National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities Director Dr. José Cordero was interviewed by 11 major Hispanic media outlets, including Telemundo, Univision, El Dia (Houston), El Nuevo Herald (Miami), La Opinion (Los Angeles), and La Raza (Chicago). Campaign champion Sofía Quezada was also interviewed for the Univision segment.

Both Cordero and Quezada discussed the campaign’s overall messages of monitoring childhood development and the importance of early intervention.  The number of Hispanic parents, health care professionals, and child care professionals reached by these media outlets totaled more than 15 million!  Check out some of the coverage below:

• La Opinion
• La Raza
• Diario Las Americas

In addition, the campaign’s Hispanic radio public service announcement (PSA) has been played 119 times in recent months.

“Learn the Signs. Act Early.”Embraces Pop Culture

Technology enables people to seek and receive information from outlets that did not exist even a few years ago.  “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” has taken advantage of two new pop culture outlets, Wikipedia and YouTube, to reach parents who are using the Internet.

Wikipedia: The Online Encyclopedia

Wikipedia is one of the hottest websites on the Internet with nearly 1 million hits a day. This online encyclopedia features more than 4 million articles and has the eighth-largest online audience in the world with 128 million visitors, trailing only Internet giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.

Using this popular resource to share campaign messages, we’ve added links throughout Wikipedia, focusing on the topics of autism, child development, developmental disabilities, and CDC, among others.  Visit www.wikipedia.org to take a look.  Click on “English”, and start searching keywords in the side bar on the left.

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“Learn the Signs. Act Early.” PSA on YouTube

Side-splittingly funny videos. Satirical political ads. Classic commercials. Teary documentaries. “Learn the Signs. Act Early.”  What do these all have in common?   YouTube!

Now a virtual phenomenon, YouTube originally started as a personal video sharing service and has grown into an entertainment destination with people watching more than 70 million videos on the site daily.  To take advantage of the traffic to this popular website, the campaign has uploaded the “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” 30-second television PSA.  Click here to view the campaign’s PSA on YouTube.  Feel free to share this video with others by simply clicking on “Share Video” below the viewing area and typing in your family and friends’ e-mail addresses – it’s that easy!

Findings of Year Two Evaluation
Reaching New Heights

To ensure the campaign is achieving its goals, campaign results are constantly being measured  through the use of various research tools.  Evaluation data for the second full year of the campaign have just arrived, so check out the current 2006 measurements and how some compare with the 2004 baseline measurements:

• One out of two pediatricians and one out of four parents have heard of the “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” campaign.
• Significantly, parents who are aware of the campaign:
• Are more likely to believe the best time to get help for a child with autism is before a child is 2 years old (30% of those aware vs. 24% unaware).
• Are more likely to strongly agree or agree that their child’s nurse or doctor asked about their child’s development at their last well-child visit (81% of those aware vs. 76% unaware).
• Are more likely to strongly agree or agree that they have asked their child’s nurse or doctor for more information about their child’s development (59% of those aware vs. 47% unaware).
• More pediatricians report they regularly screen for developmental delays (87% in 2004 vs. 92% in 2006).
• Significantly fewer pediatricians advocate a “wait and see” approach when parents share a concern about their child’s development (30% in 2004 vs. 14% in 2006).

Additionally, since the beginning of the campaign in 2004, the campaign has:

• Reached more than 5 million health care professionals through e-cards and newsletter articles.
• Reached more than 80,000 health care professionals through conferences.
• Distributed more than 22,000 resource kits to health care professionals and 40,000 to parents.
• Achieved more than 85,000 materials downloaded from the website and more than 1 million web pages viewed.
  
  
  

Ron Oberleitner
CEO of Caring Technologies/TalkAutism, Idaho

Ron Oberleitner and his family trusted their instincts about his son Robby. At around 15 months of age, Robby gradually started to lose skills he once had. He began avoiding eye contact, preferred to lie under his crib, and lost just about all his speech. “Over the next 22 months, we took Robby to many different doctors and specialists. They ruled out numerous disorders and diseases, but only after enduring sleepless nights, tantrums, and overall confusion in our family, it was a reluctant psychologist who finally helped us confirm Robby had autism,” said Ron.

Read Ron’s complete story here

Have an inspiring story to tell?
If you or someone you know has an inspiring story to tell as a result of becoming involved in the “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” campaign, please send it to actearly@cdc.gov.  We’re always looking for success stories to share with partners and campaign champions throughout the country, and we want to hear from you!

Thanks to you – our dedicated campaign partners and champions – we have increased awareness and education about childhood development across the country. You continue to play a vital role in educating parents, health care professionals, and child care providers to ensure that today’s children have the opportunity to reach their full potential. Sincere thanks to you for your continued support!

Special thanks to:

• The National Association for the Education of Young Children for its ongoing support and help facilitating the campaign’s launch of the child care provider outreach.
• All our campaign champions who participated in Child Care Provider Outreach Week.  Your efforts helped us reach child care providers in 24 states!

If you’ve been involved in your community, the campaign wants to know.  Send an e-mail to actearly@cdc.gov with your story.

Health Care Professionals: A Sneak Peak at the 2007 Conference Season

The campaign hit the ground running with a new season of health care professional conferences for 2007.  In addition to attending and sponsoring booths at conferences, the “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” team has begun to implement a few new tactics, such as continuing education materials and advertisements in publications reaching health care professionals.  The campaign is also increasing its presence and visibility at conferences through speaking opportunities.

Another goal for this conference season is to deepen partnerships with health care professional organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics to demonstrate how sustainable partnerships with the campaign will benefit both the organization and the campaign alike.  Be sure to watch for more updates as the campaign kicks off this year’s conference season!

Continued African-American Outreach

The campaign has begun to expand its reach within the African-American community through outreach to mega churches.  Having an average Sunday attendance of 2,000 or more, mega church congregations make an ideal target audience for distributing campaign material and communicating key campaign messages.  Not only do they have large congregations, but mega churches also represent a core connection point with the African-American community, providing health, educational, and child care services.  By exploring opportunities ranging from exhibiting to educational sessions to luncheons, “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” has the opportunity to reach more than 15,000 members per church with campaign messages! Stay tuned for more details.

If you are looking for ways to get more involved with the campaign, be sure to visit the Partner section of the website (www.cdc.gov/actearly) and check out our “How to Get Involved” page for ideas. You’ll find ideas and tools to help you reach out to your communities, friends, and family to help them learn the signs and act early.