Lead Poisoning Awareness Final Report for Scott County Health Department

The following study looks to address the public knowledge of lead poisoning and more specifically how knowledgeable members of Scott County are of the issue. We were approached by Scott County Health Department to assist them in developing an idea on how to increase the perceived importance and knowledge of child lead poisoning for the average Scott County resident. We conducted research to determine why a large percentage of the population in Scott County doesn’t know about the dangers of lead poisoning. Some of our hypotheses were low awareness, lack of education on the subject, and differing opinions among age groups. We conducted both primary and secondary research for this report. Our secondary data consisted of a big data analysis where we looked at both YouTube comments and Twitter hashtags. Through the YouTube comments we found that their was an oddly large focus on politics opposed to the issue of lead poisoning while there was little to no sentiment from the overall public. With the Twitter comments we found very minimal coverage on the issue within Scott County, with most of the conversation about lead poisoning only revolving around that of the Flint Water Crisis. Our primary research consisted of a ZIP code analysis, an interview with a pediatrician, and a survey released to the public designed to gauge their overall awareness, attitudes, and intentions on the issue of child lead poisoning