Reaching Hard to Reach Populations: A New Approach to the Fire Safety Message

Background Unintentional injuries disproportionately affect poor children. Strategies that reduce the financial barriers to safety devices, increase educational efforts, and improve the safety of the environment are effective at reducing death and injury rates among these populations at risk.

Development Safe Kids Worldwide and the United States Fire Administration have a longstanding partnership to promote fire safety awareness. Through this partnership, Safe Kids was able to survey its network of coalitions and learned that 72% of them are not reaching high-risk populations through their efforts. An advisory board of partners, including fire prevention experts and public health practitioners, was created to discuss best practices for reaching high-risk populations and development of new fire and burn education and prevention materials.

Implementation Safe Kids Worldwide developed the recommended materials, including educational pieces targeting pre-school aged children, and prevention materials for adults that address low literacy and ESL communities. These materials were been tested through focus groups, and they are available to our coalition network and other community partners.

Evaluation Safe Kids Worldwide is measuring the reach of the fire prevention materials through the advisory board and selected coalitions. In addition, we are gathering information on the number of materials distributed, geographical distribution of the materials, number of coalitions and community partners requesting materials, and the degree to which our materials reach high-risk populations.