Mr. Yuk Leaps Language Barriers

In 2006, the Washington State Legislature created the Governor's Interagency Council on Health Disparities to develop a state action plan to eliminate health disparities by race, ethnicity, and gender.

To ensure its work had cultural relevance, the Council committed to engaging diverse communities across the state as valued stakeholders. Council members knew communicating with people who may have limited English proficiency would be complex and difficult.

The Council designed a project to improve minority health communication capacity through grassroots outreach and engagement activities. In the first year, project staff linked to 65 partners resulting in information sharing with more than 1,400 individuals.

The Council's project activities include developing strategies for improving the availability of culturally appropriate health literature for people with limited English proficiency.

The Washington Poison Center, a small nonprofit agency based in Seattle, was a project partner rich with resources but poor in its outreach budget and so unable to distribute its multicultural materials widely. It provided poison prevention educational materials in English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese to the Council's outreach staff.

The materials - with thousands of attention grabbing, neon green "Mr. Yuk" stickers - were handed out through personal contacts at health fairs in American Indian, Hispanic, and Asian American communities. Mr. Yuk, a pop-culture icon from the 1970s, has become a universally recognized poison prevention symbol. The brightly colored un-smiley face stickers grab the attention of kids and adults.

Through sharing Mr. Yuk materials, outreach staff create one-on-one opportunities to raise awareness of health disparities and invite people to participate in Council surveys and advisory committees.

"We look forward to our continued partnership in reaching out to multicultural communities," said Autumn Allen, the Washington Poison Center's Public Relations Manager.

In an email to the project manager, Ms. Allen expressed her appreciation for the opportunity to use the Council's outreach to extend their center's poison prevention work. "The project staff who provided our materials at community events reported outreach activities back to us," said Allen.

She suggested that information from project staff would help them develop additional resources designed for communities for which language was a barrier to prevention and health education. "We will build new resources for preventing exposures to poisonous, hazardous, or toxic substances to complement our existing ability to provide response in 140 languages," she said.

Reaching a large number of community members has been possible through this project because the Council's strategies included collaborating with partners who had resources that could broaden the amount and scope of project communication materials. The team will continue to build creative new partnerships to enhance coordination on eliminating racial/ethnic health disparities.

Story Prepared By:
Project Manager: Christy Hoff
Project Outreach Coordinator: Tamara Fulwyler
Project Partner: Autumn Allen, Public Relations Mgr, Washington Poison Center

For More Information Contact:
Christy Hoff (christy.hoff@doh.wa.gov) or 360-236-4108

Tamara Fulwyler (tamara.fulwyler@doh.wa.gov) or 360-236-4109