Opening Kids' Eyes to Vision Health and Science: Developing an Eye Education Program for Kids

Background: The National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health, wants to protect and prolong the vision of the American people. To that end, NEI supports cutting-edge vision research and leads public health education efforts to help people get the information they need to protect their sight. Currently, NEI is developing an eye education program for children that aims to increase children’s knowledge of vision, eye health and safety, and to inspire interest in vision science and science careers.

Program background: To inform strategy and planning, NEI conducted in-depth interviews with teachers, teachers’ professional associations, health care providers, and community leaders to better understand the eye education landscape. NEI also conducted an environmental scan and analyzed results from previously conducted NEI focus groups with children. NEI used these insights around audience attitudes, behaviors, preferences, needs, and search tendencies to develop targeted tactics for reaching their audiences of middle school children and their school- and community-based influencers. Chief among these was a strategy to cultivate partnerships with teachers’ associations and create a set of visually enticing, plain-language materials. To start, NEI produced a series of eye health and vision animated web videos called Ask a Scientist, which featured NEI scientists answering questions asked by middle school children. Because the answers are relatively complex, NEI used animations to help explain the science. Using the same look and feel used in the video series, NEI is now developing a new section on its website for upper elementary and middle school children and educators.

Evaluation Methods and Results: NEI engaged children within the target audience to participate in website pretesting. NEI developed a series of information-seeking activities with an accompanying worksheet for participants to complete. NEI also asked a series of follow-up questions to inform future decisions about the site and what additional elements children want to see incorporated. The insights helped NEI determine that the site is informative, relevant, easy-to-use, and appealing to children. When asked what the participants liked about the website, they said things like “animation makes it more fun and exciting to see and read the information.” All participants reported that the site was very helpful or somewhat helpful. When asked if they visit health or science websites in their free time, the majority of participants responded that they never or sometimes do. However, when asked if they would visit NEI’s site if a teacher suggested it, the majority responded they definitely would or probably would. Once the website is launched (we hope by August 2016), NEI will work with influencers to incorporate its children’s materials into their classrooms and homework assignments, community group activities, and health clinics.

Conclusions: Working with stakeholders and the target audience is helping NEI develop a program that presents health and science information for children in an appealing way.

Implications for research and/or practice: When developing resources for children, using animations and interactivity can make information easier to understand, as well as more fun and engaging. Reaching children with health information may require gearing promotional strategies toward educators and other intermediaries who work with children.