Focus on Pediatrics: Henry the Hand teaches kids hand awareness
October 1, 2002 3 minutes read
Message is simple, fun, and memorable
Every year during cold and flu season, families struggle to keep everyone in the household well. But no matter how careful you are, sick children always manage to spread germs at school and at home. Soon children, their families, and teachers are sick.
But communicable diseases such as colds can be kept from spreading, and the solution is quite simple, says William Sawyer, MD, a family practice physician in Cincinnati. It’s hand awareness, which is more than hand washing. It means people who are aware of where their hands are and what they are doing at all times. When people cough into their hand, they create a vector for the transmission of disease, he says. If people stopped contaminating their eyes, nose, and mouth, they wouldn’t contract communicable diseases such as the flu.
To improve hand awareness, Sawyer created Henry the Hand, a hand character that can be used to teach children, grab people’s attention at health fairs and other community events, and even teach staff in-house. No matter what the target group is, four principles of hand awareness are promoted:
- Wash your hands when they are dirty and before eating.
- Do not cough into your hands.
- Do not sneeze into your hands.
- Above all, do not put your fingers into your eyes, nose, or mouth.
The Henry the Hand Foundation offers low- cost hand-washing/awareness reinforcement tools and curriculum to make outreach and in-house education easy to accomplish. "We have hand-wash stations so when Henry the Hand attends community events, people come and talk to him and wash their hands," says Sawyer.
Part of the education is teaching people the correct way to wash their hands that includes using soap and running water, scrubbing for 15 seconds, and turning the faucet off with a paper towel. The use of the paper towel shows hand awareness because touching the faucet could contaminate hands. The awareness part often means that people must break old habits such as rubbing their nose with their hand when they speak, scratching their eye when it itches, or covering their mouth with their hand when they cough.
"People must learn to cover their mouth with anything but a bare hand when they cough or sneeze. It can be their elbow, the crook of their arm, their sleeve, or a tissue," says Sawyer. To scratch an eye that itches, they may use a tissue or part of their shirt sleeve.
To help educate the public, the Henry the Hand Foundation has created a coloring/activity book for preschool and grades K-3 and 4-6. Each page in the coloring book is a lesson plan that teachers can use in their classrooms. Children take the activity pages home to help educate their family.
To help get hand awareness curriculum into the schools, Sawyer encourages physicians, other health care professionals, and parents to "adopt a school." They would then supply the coloring/ activity books, which are the curriculum and reinforcement tools for use throughout the school year. Reinforcement tools include refrigerator magnets, stickers, hand-washing instruction posters, and weekly hand-washing charts. Those wishing to get more involved could play act the skit the foundation developed, which is based on Henry the Hand’s Principles of Hand Awareness.
Another educational opportunity is to teach all health care professionals how to teach patients the four principles of hand awareness.
With nosocomial infections impacting about 2 million patients annually in acute care facilities, a new approach to educating health care workers is needed, he says. Henry the Hand’s message is meant to be simple, fun, and memorable.
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