Aug. 18--EL PASO -- Pepin is a mischievous 13-year-old who wants to do a little grinding on his skateboard.
Should he wear a helmet and pads? Or will he get too hot? Look too nerdy?
Maybe, one health expert believes, he might make the right call if he knew this: "In 1997, 1,500 children required hospitalization for an injury sustained while skateboarding and in most cases the injury was to the head."
Of course, there's no guarantee a hormonally challenged teenager like the fictional Pepin is going to make the right decision.
But, Dr. Marie Leiner figures, if he knows the pros and cons of an action, he'll at least have the information he needs before he makes that decision.
Leiner is the award-winning "health communicator" and research professor who is combining helpful and healthy messages for kids in a way she hopes is accessible and relatable to them.
She's creating an interactive Web page, starring Pepin, that's called the Kohl's Safe Child Initiative, expected to be up and running by September.
"I think one of the big problems we have when we try to communicate good or healthy behaviors to adolescents, adults or children is that we do not get into the same field that they are familiar with and they like," said Leiner, a research associate professor in the pediatrics department at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center at El Paso.
The Mexico City native wants to communicate with her audience, no matter what the age, on a level they can understand
and appreciate.
"To communicate to them the importance of wearing a helmet, for example, if I wrote something really boring, they're not going to read it," she said. "But if I do something like (the interactive site) that's popular, that they know, like video games are popular, they are going to read what I am trying to say."
Pepin, in fact, is based on the Mexican school kids version of a class clown, Pepito, the kid who knows the right thing to do but doesn't always do it. He started as a cartoon in 1994 and has evolved into the star of an award-winning video, "The Adventures of Pepin," created by Dr. Leiner for the pediatrics department's Health Education Program.
Among the trophies he's brought home to the Texas Tech mantel this year are honors from the International Academy of the Visual Arts and the WorldFest Houston and a Telly Awards.
With a $44,000 grant from Kohl's Cares for Kids initiative, Leiner is taking Pepin and his healthy messages to cyberspace. So, with a team of designers and illustrators from the project's Mexican partner, El Colegio de Chihuahua, she felt it was time to take Pepin to the next level.
"I thought we needed to do something different than what I had been doing. It's too slow, the dissemination of the product we have," she said. "If I put it on the Web, everybody is going to access this."
The target audience is kids and adults in the El
Paso-Juarez area. Using an approach called vicarious learning -- learning by example and consequences, Leiner said -- it will be promoted at schools, in the media and through "prescriptions" that will be written by participating pediatricians.
"As part of their prescription they'll say, 'We want you to look at this Web page for three hours.' They'll give them a user name and a password to log in with and they'll have access," she said.
They will be tested at the beginning of those three accumulated hours, and tested again at the end.
"We'll do that because, one, is to look to see if they remember what they saw on the page," she explained, "and, second, is to rate their satisfaction and ask how do they feel about it."
The idea, she stressed, is to combine research on subjects with images and words her audience will understand, turning them into what she calls "pictogames" so whoever uses the site can make an informed choice.
"We can ask, 'Do you wear a helmet?' They can say, 'No.' At the end we can ask if they changed their opinion about helmets. Many will say no, but some will say yes and we still don't know if they are going to use it," Leiner explained.
"Adolescents especially will tell you the truth. They will not tell you want we want to hear, but at least they'll now the risk and make decisions based on that."
Given health problems such as obesity, diabetes and high cholesterol along the border, Leiner figures, if communicators like her can't reach the parents, maybe they can reach the kids.
"We want this thing to be used," she said. "If we continue being in the dark, they'll never learn. This could be something they'll take a look at."
Doug Pullen may be reached at dpullen@elpasotimes.com; 546-6397.
Development:
--Dr. Marie Leiner hopes to go beyond the DVD and Web site to develop more approaches that kids can appreciate, including video games.
--"The ideal next thing is to do a pictogame that looks like the prototype of what a company might be interested in," she said, "so we can have less aggressive video games and more healthy video games." To see more of the El Paso Times, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.elpasotimes.com. Copyright (c) 2008, El Paso Times, Texas Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2008 El Paso Times, Texas