A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
One of the most important steps in treating patients is educating them about their condition so they can understand what is happening and why and take the proper steps to manage it.
But the body is a complex machine, so explaining how a disease affects its function in simple terms is challenging. How do you present important health information in a way that’s both enlightening and engaging?
A multidisciplinary team at Cincinnati Children’s came up with one solution for children with hemophilia and their families—a video, called “Clot Control: A Story about Hemophilia.”
The team consisted of the medical director, nurses, child life specialist, health educator and a team of medical artists. They started by defining their educational objectives, then gathered feedback from patients and families during hemophilia comprehensive clinic visits that identified gaps in knowledge of hemophilia. The clinical team used this feedback to refine the focus of the educational objectives and created a script. The script was reviewed by our internal Clinical Content Committee to ensure that it was written in plain language that would be accessible to all health literacy levels. The process of developing an approved script and creating the animated video took approximately two years to complete.
The video is a little over 5 minutes long and provides a clear explanation of educational concepts that are challenging for children with hemophilia and their families to understand. These concepts include understanding the clotting process and the development of inhibitors. This video also emphasizes important educational concepts, such as recognizing the signs of a bleed, getting preventative care, and safe sports and physical activity. This video can be viewed on Cincinnati Children’s YouTube channel.
Meet Kevin and learn about the bleeding disorder, hemophilia. Hemophilia is a rare, lifelong bleeding disorder that is caused by reduced or missing levels of clotting factor VIII (8) or factor IX (9). Cincinnati Children’s Hemophilia Treatment Center offers comprehensive care for all types of bleeding disorders, including hemophilia. Our multidisciplinary team helps people with a bleeding disorder get the care they need to be as healthy as possible. Clinical and research pioneers at Cincinnati Children’s are committed to changing the outcome for children and young adults with bleeding disorders.
Supported by: Great Lakes Hemophilia Network, which is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
Video produced by the Cincinnati Children's Media Lab: www.twitter.com/cincykidsmedart
Content experts: Cristina Tarango, MD, Lisa Littner, MPH, MSW, Cheryl Dahling, BS, Julie Doyle, BSN, and Julie Hendrickson, BSN, RN. Experts: Cristina Tarango, MD, Lisa Littner, MPH, MSW, Cheryl Dahling, BS
Media Lab direction: Ken Tegtmeyer, MD, and Ryan A. Moore, MD
Animation: Jeff Cimprich, Matt Nelson, and Julia Bendon (Cincinnati Children’s Media Lab)
2D illustrations: Tyra Victor Character
Character animation: Mike Gasaway
Original music and sound design: Alexander Taylor
Voice-over by: Cristina Mella
What Is Hemophilia?
Hemophilia is a rare bleeding disorder that affects approximately 30,000 individuals in our country.
Guidelines of care recommend that children with hemophilia receive education on increasing their understanding of their bleeding disorder. School-age children, which is the video’s intended audience, are progressing from thinking concretely to using more logic. Children at this age have difficulty understanding what hemophilia is and why having hemophilia makes them bleed. The purpose of our video is to improve the understanding of hemophilia, the potential complications, and its treatment. The video plays on the school-age child’s increasing awareness of the inner workings of the parts of their blood. It conceptualizes the child’s progressive understanding that bleeding on the inside of the body can cause symptoms on the outside. Videos are an effective educational tool for engaging people of all health literacy levels. YouTube offers the opportunity to reach our school-age audience, who are undoubtedly familiar with the website, but it also allows for a larger reach to others in the hemophilia community.