With the White House estimating that 30 to 50 percent of Americans will contract H1N1 flu this season, you’d think more people would be focused on prevention.
According to research by the New York Times bestselling authors of Influencer: The Power to Change Anything (McGraw-Hill), a book on behavior change, only 14 percent of adults and 2 percent of kids wash their hands after coughing or sneezing—or shaking hands with someone who just did.
An online poll of more than 750 adults, 294 of which are parents, discovered that hand-washing behaviors are dismal. Only one in four adults washes their hands before eating, and an astonishing one out of five fails to wash their hands after using the restroom.
View the full results: http://www.vitalsmarts.com/userfiles/File/Research/Handwashing_results.pdf
However, the main culprits of the impending flu pandemic are kids. According to the poll, children who are bussed off to school in droves do very little to prevent the spread of germs:
- Three out of four kids don’t wash their hands after using the restroom
- Fewer than one in ten kids wash their hands before eating
- 12 percent of kids wash their hands after being with someone who is sick
And while kids may not know better, their parents do. Unfortunately, parents have done little to change their children’s behavior. According to the poll, nearly four out of five parents say they send their children to school when they are sick, so long as they don’t have a fever. And even more (85 percent) say they’ve caught their children “cheating” when asked to wash their hands.
Joseph Grenny, author of Influencer, says that while consistent hand hygiene is one of the most well-known and effective guards against infection, a “knowing/doing” gap is putting our health at risk.
“Changing behavior is hard and hand-washing habits are ingrained behaviors,” says Grenny. “Our research shows verbal reminders and reprimands do little to change how often adults and kids wash their hands. Rather, to change hand-washing behavior, parents need to combine multiple sources of influence. What this means is that beyond verbal reminders, parents need to motivate their kids, teach them skills, enlist positive peer pressure, and alter the environment—all at the same time.”
Grenny offers parents six easy tips for getting kids to wash their hands. According to the proven behavior change model outlined in Grenny’s book Influencer, the key to success is using all six tips in combination: