Online Program

288353
Predictors of participation in a fire department home visiting program


Wednesday, November 6, 2013 : 9:15 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.

Beata Debinski, MHS, Center for Injury Research and Policy, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Eileen McDonald, MS, Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Shannon Frattaroli, PhD, MPH, Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Xia Ma, MS, Center for Injury Research and Policy, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Wendy C. Shields, MPH, Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Elise Perry, MHS, Center for Injury Research and Policy, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Andrea C. Gielen, ScD, ScM, Center for Injury Research and Policy, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Purpose: A community intervention trial was conducted in partnership with the Baltimore City Fire Department as part of a home visiting program to install smoke alarms. The trial included 170 home visit events that reached residential addresses in 12 census tracts, of which half were assigned to the treatment area. The aims of this analysis were to determine if environmental and program characteristics of a home visit event predict: 1) whether someone would be at home at the time of the visit, and 2) if home, would the resident choose to participate in the program. Methods: Two parallel, multi-level analyses were conducted; the home visit event served as the first level and the census tract as the second. A multi-level model was chosen to account for variation in program implementation. Both models incorporated dichotomous, fixed effects for environmental and program characteristics. Results/Outcomes: During the 170 events, a total of 8080 homes were visited; 3216 residents were at home; 2197 residents participated in the program. Preliminary results show that conducting home visit events on the weekend and in the evening were associated with higher odds of someone being at home. Results also indicate that conducting an event when it was not raining and while the battalion chief was on site, and in the treatment program area were associated with higher odds of participation. Conclusions: Environmental characteristics and programmatic factors can influence the success of home visiting programs. These findings can help inform best practices for future fire department home visiting programs.

Learning Areas:

Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs

Learning Objectives:
Describe how programmatic characteristics can predict if a fire department will make contact with a household as part of a city-wide program fire prevention program. Explain how programmatic characteristics can predict participation. Discuss implications of findings on implementation of future fire department home visiting programs.

Keyword(s): Injury Prevention, Public Health Education and Health Promotion

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am a mastered trained public health professional. I worked as a student investigator on this project under the direction of my faculty co-investigators. My co-investigators have been partnering with fire prevention professionals for the past decade to advance the effectiveness of fire prevention services.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.