What Not to Eat

Research Proposal

Working Title: Decreasing Accidental Poisoning Exposures Through Educational Programs

Aims: My aims with this project are to analyze what the most effective way to decrease accidental poisoning deaths in the United States would be. First I need to determine how effective the network of Poison Control Centers is in helping those who call either with emergency situations, or with information. I also need to determine how many poisoning cases there are annually and compare that to how many calls the poison centers receive in order to establish whether these centers are easily accessible to all people who may need help. Most importantly I would have to study how the Poison Center designs its educational programs and how they might be improved to reach more people and be more effective. Finally, based on the issues and benefits I have discovered with the Poison Centers, I would create a product that would help to fix some of the problems in public education relating to poison dangers, and hopefully help decrease the number of poisoning deaths.

Background and Rationale: The problem that I plan to research is the high number of accidental poisoning deaths in the United States. For citizens ages 25-64, accidental poisoning is the leading cause of death in the unintentional injury category. This category in itself is the leading cause of death for this age range which highlights just how common poison deaths are. Researching better ways to educate and prevent accidental poisonings is significant because poisoning is the leading cause of accidental deaths for a significant age range of the U.S population, with about 15.4 deaths occurring for every 100,000 people and a morbidity rate of 1 incident for every 10 people. With this in mind my topic may be too large if including the entire United States, and I may want to narrow it down to just Texas to make research easier.

Research Methodology: I plan to first review Poison Center statistics (number of calls every day, number of people treated at home through the centers, annual poison cases reported to the center versus total annual cases) most of which can be found on their website. The most important of these statistics is the comparison between the number of calls reported versus the total number of accidental poisoning cases because it will show me whether or not enough people have access to the Poison Center in emergencies. I would then research the various programs that the center has for public education and determine their strengths and weaknesses by comparing them to other programs ( I will have to do more research as well as to what makes an effective education program). I plan to ask the education director for the Poison Control centers to be my mentor which will help me gain access to a lot of information on the public outreach programs. I have also looked on EBSCO and hesitantly picked out some research articles that may be useful, or lead me to better sources. Most of my research will be statistics but the hardest information to find will be on the development of educational programs because it is hard to qualify how well they work and why.

Timetable:

• September 20-27: Contact possible mentors, begin researching Poison Center statistics

• Sept 28-Oct 4: Continue Posion Center research

• Oct 5-11: Finish Poison Center research and use what was discovered to determine what other info is needed

• Oct 12-18: Free research week (Additional info based on what was just researched)

• Oct 19-25: Begin education program research (PCC programs)

• Oct 26-Nov 1: Continue education program research (other programs)

• Nov 2-8: Continue education program research (what makes a good program?)

• Nov 9-15: Finish education program research, determine any additional questions

• Nov 16-22: Free Research Week

• Nov 23-29: Start researching product

• Nov 30- Dec 6: Should be ready to start creating product and presentation with only minimal research if necessary

Risks: In my project I plan to augment or create an education program to prevent accidental poisoning deaths. A risk of this will be that if this program is enacted and any information I researched is incorrect, people could be hurt inadvertently. I plan to minimize this risk by checking all information related to the medical side of my research with multiple sources and frequently conferring with my mentor to make sure everything is acceptable.

References: My most used resources will likely be the CDC website for their statistics on causes of death, the Poison Center website for statistics on leading poisons, modes of poisoning, age groups affected, etc., and EBSCO for articles on public education programs and the effectiveness of Poison Control centers.