Development of culturally appropriate public service announcements to promote Hands-Only CPR to Chinese immigrants

Introduction: Despite the availability of training opportunities, the proportion of citizens trained to perform CPR is small and many are unfamiliar with bystander CPR. People with limited English proficiency (LEP) have difficulty understanding written and verbal information and therefore are not often reached by English educational materials or media-based CPR instruction campaigns. Forty-five percent of the Chinese living in Washington State reported they “spoke English less than very well.” Methods: We conducted 5 focus groups to understand the spread of CPR training among the Chinese LEP. We learned that few participants were CPR trained. Participants were concerned about potential legal liability when performing CPR on a stranger and preferred calling 911 to performing bystander CPR. Participants also feared causing harm to the victim when performing CPR. Results: Based on the focus group findings, we developed four public service announcements to promote Chinese LEP individuals' awareness of bystander CPR. The content of PSAs includes: the importance of early CPR, the new CPR guidelines, CPR training opportunities in the community, and “Q & A: Myths about CPR.” Each PSA includes illustrations demonstrating how to perform hands-only CPR. CPR websites were also introduced. The final drafts of the PSAs were pretested by ten adult Chinese LEP and revisions were made. Conclusion: We will advertise the PSAs in 3 free, local Chinese community-based newspapers over a period of one month. The impact of PSAs will be assessed through a pre and post community telephone survey and tracking “hits” of CPR website.