Boosting Restraint Norms: A Community-Delivered Campaign to Promote Booster Seat Use

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a theoretically grounded community-delivered marketing campaign to promote belt-positioning booster seat (BPB) use among vulnerable populations when disseminated by community members.

Methods: A prospective, nonrandomized community intervention trial was conducted to evaluate the “Boosting Restraint Norms” social marketing campaign delivered by community partners in Norristown, Pennsylvania (intervention community), between October 2008 and November 2008. York, Pennsylvania, served as the comparison community. In total, 800 vehicles with 822 children aged 4 to 7 years were observed for BPB use, the primary outcome of interest, at baseline (September 2008) and at 6 months after intervention (April 2009).

Results: During the study period, a 28 percent increase in the prevalence of BPB use at 6 months was observed in the intervention community with no change in the prevalence of BPB use in the comparison community. After adjustment for child age and gender, vehicle type, driver gender, and driver level, BPB use increased from 39 to 50 percent in the intervention community.

Conclusions: The “Boosting Restraint Norms” social marketing campaign, distributed through community organizations combined with caregiver education and a one-time free distribution of BPBs, was effective in increasing BPB use. This study demonstrates the feasibility of utilizing community organizations with established audiences to spread the “No Regrets” messaging of the campaign in the community. This study also indicates that spreading evidence-based messages in this manner may effectively change behavior in populations that are often hard to reach. Future studies are needed in which this methodology is tested in additional communities and rural settings.

Keywords:

• social marketing
• prevention
• community
• seat belts
• child restraint systems
• accident prevention
• community health education
• intervention studies
• injury
• behavioral research

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the Norristown and York communities for their participation, Marketing 4 Change for creation of the materials, Transanalytics for help in data collection. In addition, we are grateful for the support of Center for Injury Research and Prevention staff, most notably, Tracy Durham, MSHE, and Valerie Caraballo, MSN. The authors also thank Megan C. Fisher Thiel, MPH, and Christine Norris for formatting and review of the article.