Combining primary and secondary poison prevention in one initiative

Objective. Contrary to the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on Forging a Poison Prevention and Control System, a certified regional poison information center combined both primary and secondary education with another public health initiative to determine if there was an impact on poison center awareness. Methods. Poison Help stickers that contained the national toll-free poison center number were inserted into a quarterly publication from a children's hospital and mailed to 136,741 residents of a poison center service region. Benchmark data from a six-month period were used to compare call volume both before and after the initiative. Results. Call volume increased by a mean of 8.8% from the counties where at least 5% of residents received the mailing. Conclusions. A single passive mass-mailing education program that combined primary and secondary poison prevention education may have had a small, but positive impact on poison center call volume when a threshold of 5% of the residents received the information.