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Alan Tart

Retail Food Program Specialist

FDA/ORA/Office of Partnerships

Improving Behaviors on the Front Line

FDA’s Partnership with Google to Test the

Effectiveness of Oral Culture Learner Project Materials

Chuck Catlin, RS, MPA

Global Food Quality & Risk Manager

Google, Inc.

118th AFDO Annual Educational Conference, Denver, CO

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Presentation Objectives

• Attendees will be able to describe:

– Differences between oral and print culture learners

– FDA’s Oral Culture Learner Project (OCLP)

– The experiment conducted in partnership with Google to test the effectiveness of the OCLP materials

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The Faces and Families Behind the Statistics (Source: http://www.stopfoodborneillness.org)

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Oral versus Print Culture Learners

• Dr. Donna Beegle

• 2004 Oregon Environmental Health Specialist Network (EHS-Net) Communication Study

• Study conclusion:– Food employees = oral culture learners– Regulators = print culture learners

Oral versus Print Culture Communication:How we receive, process, & retain information

• Oral • Print

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Recommendations for Communicating Food Concepts to Oral Culture Learners

(cont’d)

• Share stories, sayings, vivid examples of outbreaks

• Stress the importance of role modeling

• Have information presented by someone they trust

• Use simple words or examples food workers can relate to

• Present information verbally and often (Beegle, 2004)

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Recommendations for Communicating Food Concepts to Oral Culture Learners

(cont’d)

• Minimize power dynamic (with exception, use eye contact)

• Focus on the big picture, not the gory details

• Be interactive

(Beegle, 2004)

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FDA’s Oral Culture Learner Projecthttp://www.fda.gov/foodemployeetraining

• Multi-language posters, storyboards, and video testimonials

• Available for free

• Focus on the consequences of not following the food safety practice

• Are designed to enhance, not replace, existing training materials

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Foodborne Illness Victim Video Testimonials

• Available for viewing and download

• Spanish and English closed captioning

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Partnership between FDA and Google to Test the Effectiveness of the Oral Culture Learner Project Materials

Definition of Insanity

Repeating the same process over and over and expecting to get different outcomes……

• At Google, we are always looking for the next 10X project. Not incremental improvement, but exponential improvement.– Google Search Engine– Voice Recognition and Translation – Driverless Car

Google-FDA PartnershipEffectiveness Experiment

Could The FDA Oral Culture Materials be a 10X Food Safety Training System?

• Could the FDA Oral Culture training provide the spark to better outcomes and increased positive food safety behaviors? – Learning – Recall– Actual Behavior Change

• Google is not working on the true Neuralyzer

So What Did We Do?

• What were our goals?– To see a positive directional change in behavioral

performance by using the Oral Culture learning materials

• We did not do a controlled study – Not possible to completely control the environment – Not enough participants (+300)– Did not provide long enough training (1.5 hour

sessions)– Be Safe Training

Goal is 100% Compliance with the Be Safe behaviors

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Google-FDA PartnershipEffectiveness Experiment

• Participants:– Google Food Team – Bon Appetit– FDA– Santa Clara County, CA Health Department– Monterey County, CA Hhealth Department

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Google-FDA PartnershipEffectiveness Experiment

• Location: Googleplex, Mountain View, CA

• 35 full service establishments

• Focus on poor personal hygiene risk factor

• Baseline data collection

• All employees had basic CA food handler training & Bon Appetit corporate training

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Google-FDA PartnershipEffectiveness Experiment

• 24 establishments grouped into three cohorts:– Cohort 1 received no additional training (control)– Cohort 2 received food handler training– Cohort 3 received food handler + oral culture training

• 307 food employees trained

• Behavior change was evaluated using post training audit data

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Group Activity Using the Oral Culture Posters/Videos

• What food safety messages were communicated in the poster/video?

• How did the poster/video make you feel?

• Did the poster/video make you want to ____________?

What Did We See

• We saw the directional improvement needed to move forward with Phase II

• Food handlers who received the Oral Culture Training would stop me as I walked through the kitchen to say we are working hard not to kill Mrs. Ploghoft

Phase II

• Google will help support the development of an on-line food handler class that features the Oral Culture materials (Will help to enhance the current material)

• Google will work with the FDA to help develop daily flash card reminder training for alley rallies or other quick real time training reminders

• Continue to measure the progress. We would love to see 10X improvement in food safety behaviors. (100% Compliance with Be Safe)

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Alan Tart

Retail Food Program Specialist

FDA/ORA/Office of Partnerships

(404) 253-1267

Alan.Tart@fda.hhs.gov

Chuck Catlin, RS, MPA

Global Food Quality & Risk Manager, Google, Inc. (602) 769-1418

catlin@google.com

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To order free posters, go tohttp://www.fda.gov/foodemployeetraining

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To view the testimonials, go to http://www.fda.gov/foodemployeetraining

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To download the testimonials, go to http://www.fda.gov/foodemployeetraining