Development of an educational cartoon to prevent worm infections in Chinese schoolchildren

Franziska A Bieri, Li-Ping Yuan, Yue-Sheng Li, Yong-Kang He, Andrew Bedford, Robert S Li, Feng-Ying Guo, Sheng-Ming Li, Gail M Williams, Donald P McManus, Giovanna Raso, Darren J Gray

With more than two billion people infected worldwide, soil-transmitted helminths (STH) are the most widespread infections. To date, STH control efforts rely predominantly on recurrent mass drug administration (MDA), which does not prevent reinfection. Additional public health measures including novel health educational tools are required for more sustained integrated control of STH. We describe the development of an educational cartoon video (The Magic Glasses) targeting STH infections in Chinese schoolchildren and its pilot testing in China.We applied an extensive community-based mixed methods approach involving input from the target group of 9-10 year old schoolchildren and key informants, such as teachers, doctors and parents, in order to identify potential STH infection risks in the study area and to formulate key messages for the cartoon. The development of the educational cartoon included three major steps: formative research, production, and pilot testing and revision.