The Hamilton County Preparation Project uses a variety of community health education tools to encourage pandemic influenza education and preparedness within the county. This was an extensive and fairly comprehensive community outreach activity. Precursors to conducting outreach included developing and issuing surveys to identify the knowledge baseline in the community and creating population-based advisory committees to assist in the development of educational materials.
Several materials offer an inclusive understanding of this practice: the practical PowerPoint presentations, the tips for encouraging social distancing and infection control measures in faith-based organizations, and the list of school action triggers. The tips for faith-based organizations are geared largely toward Catholic communities, and jurisdictions may need to supplement this approach with a discussion of other religious faiths. The school action triggers may need to be updated to reflect current federal recommendations on disease mitigation and delegate roles and responsibilities to specific decision-makers. Many of the other materials will be useful for a small proportion of people, and local health jurisdictions may benefit particularly from documents that describe community service projects and volunteer recruitment.
