Thinking inside the Box: Using Cartoon Strips to Teach Food Safety

Background:  Retail foodservice, the final point of food delivery to consumers, is an area of vulnerability for food protection.  Few user-friendly resources exist to engage and train frontline food workers.  Available materials on the topic are lengthy, complex, full of jargon and not targeted at the average employee.  This project aimed to create targeted resources to address areas of challenge to the retail community:  culturally and linguistically diverse workers, marginal foodhandler interest, and limited time to train.   

Program background:  To a reluctant reader or an English Language Learner, tradition education can be daunting; The key to getting these learners engaged to spark their imagination and interest. Comics are a perfect vehicle. They divide up the text into manageable chunks, which are supported by images (Haines, 2006).  This project focused on using comic strip type illustrations to assist in garnering interest of a workforce that doesn’t always respond well to traditional classroom teaching.  Participant involvement was crucial to assuring an end product that focused on prevention, and was not only applicable, but entertaining.    Keep Food and People Safe  is a series of print cartoons, developed  to be used as part of an integrated approach to food safety.     Designed to be easily used in a variety of approaches and settings by health educators, regulators, and foodservice managers, these materials are equally applicable for use in impromptu teachable moments during regulatory food inspections, for just-in-time trainings during emergencies or special events, for short in-service education sessions, and/or for inclusion in food safety classroom settings.     The cartoons depict four plausible food service scenarios, where a worker can take a small action to prevent potential injury or illness:  

• Buying food from known sources 
• Handling illness
• Preventing bad actions
• Reporting strange behavior 

These training cartoons were translated into 10 languages to assure use and acceptance among a diverse foodservice audience.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  A multi-pronged approach was used to evaluate Keep Food and People Safe.    Drafts of the cartoons were introduced to and pilot tested with foodservice worker attendees at basic food safety education classes.   Minor adjustments to the cartoons resulted.  The cartoons were additionally introduced to public health professionals, where feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and many requests for the materials continue to be received.   83% of health professionals in a pilot indicated they will use these materials in the course of their job.   Reception from foodservice management was also positive and use of these materials in classroom settings increased engagement and interest of foodhandlers.  Based on feedback from audiences, 3 additional cartoon scenarios are in development.  

Conclusions:  There is a relationship between simple, engaging education and desired employee behaviors.  These cartoons are training materials of empowerment, as each foodservice worker has an important responsibility to speak up if something may not be right.    This is a foodservice adaptation of “if you see something, say something,” illustrating what things may constitute situations of concern for the average food worker.  

Implications for research and/or practice:  Delivering complex health education information and content in  friendly, alternative approaches, such as print cartoons, may help professionals engage culturally and linguistically diverse audiences.