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Seattle Children's Research Institute · Health education

Can educating mothers about their risks create behavior change?

PEEP — Preventing Environmental Exposure in Pregnancy. We helped create and test educational materials to help pregnant women understand and navigate everyday exposure to BPA.

ClientSeattle Children's Research Institute

ExpertiseDesign · Digital & Innovation · Science Storytelling · User Experience

DomainMaternal health · Newborn and child health

PISheela Sathyanarayana, MD, MPH

The challenge

Ninety-five percent of us have BPA in our urine.

It comes from plastic containers, canned foods, dental sealants and carbonless receipts. Children are at greater risk from chemicals in food, water, dirt and air.

Safe methodologies need to be clearly and simply explained for the populations most at risk. The Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development partnered with us on the design of the field research and the clinical study material.

The toolkit

The same curriculum, built twice: once digital, once on paper.

We developed a Kindle app, analog educational modules, training videos, a logo and supplemental resources. Users learned about exposures in their home; how to make healthy choices while shopping; how to cook, prepare, serve and store food; and how to make an impact in their child's life.

Both modalities suited low-, middle- and high-income families, and were designed to be tested in immigrant communities. Kit materials like shopping cards aided grocery trips; portable modules travelled with participants.

Design parameters

Written for a third-grade reading level, and tested in homes.

Third-grade reading level Ethnographic profiling Image and object recognition Colour-coding principles Iconography Video-based storytelling

Iconography and colour-coding across the modules

Video-based storytelling

Opening frame: a mother in her kitchen, produce on the cutting board — Film PEEP education film, 1 of 2

A participant working through the Dust and Air module on the study Kindle — Film PEEP education film, 2 of 2

How the pilot ran

In-home training

With immigrant, English-as-a-second-language, low-education pregnant mothers.

Cooking and fresh food

Hands-on education, plus round-robin community discussions.

Validation

Urine samples, quizzes, and community impact surveys.

The approach

High-cost digital against low-cost paper, tested side by side.

Long-lasting behavior change is most likely when it is self-motivated and rooted in positive thinking. A core methodology was to test expensive digital tools against inexpensive paper ones in the same field research — to understand digital versus paper knowledge transfer and the costs attached to each.

We balanced gestalt design theory with learning-based principles to help users take in and manage complex medical information.

Module page: food preparation and storage

Outcome

Every participant returned their Kindle for a food voucher.

Post-study feedback documented the “preciousness” of the paper tools. Lower-income families used and shared the analog materials within their communities.

Instead of keeping the technology, participants held round-robin discussions, sharing paper modules over meals and transferring what they had learned verbally — feeling a moral responsibility to pass it on for the betterment of their community.

Accolades

AIGA (re)Design Awards

Culture, 2015

GDUSA Health + Wellness

Design Award, 2014

GDUSA American Graphic Design

Award, 2014

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