Educating the Health Community

One of the toughest groups to reach with health promotion/education campaigns is primary care physicians (PCPs). Besieged by demands of HMOs and skyrocketing malpractice insurance, new regulations under HIPAA, and multiple demands for their attention, PCPs are also the recipients of luxuriously financed, well-researched appeals from pharmaceutical representatives offering blandishments beyond the dreams of public health professionals. But a small group of professionals in Hawai‘i took on this challenge and succeeded. Why would we even try? How did we succeed? We report the evolution and evaluation of an educational outreach campaign targeting PCPs and aiming to increase their identification of infants and toddlers with special needs, and their referral of those babies to Early Intervention programs.