Public Health Campaigns Influence Lyme Disease Attitudes, Behaviors

Comprehensive public health programs aimed at educating residents of several Connecticut towns about Lyme disease and appropriate prevention measures appear to have succeeded in shifting public opinion and altering behavior.

A recent study co–authored by an alumna of the Yale School of Public Health found that many residents of three health districts (comprising 21 towns) were influenced by the multimedia health campaigns that ended in 2004. Significant numbers of residents were aware of the threat posed by Lyme disease, the most common vector–borne disease in the United States, and many took preventative steps to avoid becoming infected.

The study sought to gauge the effectiveness of such health campaigns in educating and protecting the public. The intervention programs were developed by the respective health districts and targeted more than 200,000 residents in areas of Connecticut with a high prevalence of Lyme disease. The study results will help guide the development of future public health campaigns by identifying measures that are most likely to succeed.

“Our findings demonstrate that targeted, community–based intervention programs can impact Lyme disease prevention behaviors,” said L. Hannah Gould, Ph.D. ’05 and a senior epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The study was done in collaboration with the Connecticut Department of Public Health in Hartford.

“Residents of Connecticut and other Lyme disease endemic areas should not forget the importance of Lyme disease prevention. Wear long pants, use repellents, check for ticks after being outdoors, make your backyard a ‘tick–safe’ zone,” she said.

The study found that following the outreach campaign there was a 7 percent increase in the number of respondents who reported that they always did a tick check after being outdoors. There also was a 5 percent increase in the number of people reporting the use of insect repellants, and more people reported that they wore long pants when in wooded or brushy areas. Overall, the study found that 99 percent of the survey respondents took personal protective measures to avoid infection at least some of the time.

But not all of the study results showed increased public vigilance. The number of people who reported tucking their pant legs into their socks (a measure that prevents ticks from coming into contact with skin) decreased by several percentage points. Fewer people also reported avoiding wooded areas and landscaping their property to reduce deer and tick abundance.

The researchers pointed out that the study was limited to people over 18 years old, thus it did not survey how children (one of the highest at–risk groups) were influenced by the media campaign.

Details of the research are published in the August issue of the journal Vector–Borne and Zoonotic Diseases.