Identification and Implementation of Effective Educational Campaigns for Private Well Testing (50m Lecture)

 Public health officials report difficulty in raising awareness among private well owners to perform regular testing and maintenance of their private wells. To identify and evaluate effective approaches that promote well testing and maintenance, a survey of local, state, and national well testing programs was conducted, with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Effective approaches were evaluated to determine the situational characteristics behind their success to provide a set of parameters for determining which approaches might be more effective in specific situations. In this lecture, the results of the survey will be discussed to describe the issues that should be considered when developing such a program. A number of successful approaches will be discussed to provide the audience with an assessment of the criteria used to evaluate how and when each approach should be used as part of a private well testing educational campaign. For each approach described, examples will be provided of how the approach was successfully used, situational information that affected how successful the approach was will be described, and information on the resources necessary for implementing each approach will be provided. The goal of the lecture is to provide attendees with a roadmap for how they might create a successful private well testing program.