December 2022 • Journal of Environmental Health 45 ricanes, wildfires) and focused on what they went through in the months immediately following the disaster. Natural disasters often disproportionately a ect low-income communities and communities of color (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022). To ensure that our materials reflected this priority audience, we included Black and Hispanic teens in our interviews. Due to the COVID19 pandemic, we conducted and recorded all interviews over Zoom. Step 3: Create Resources We designed a suite of engaging and innovative products based on our interviews. These resources included vlog-style videos, posters, and social media graphics. Step 4: Test Resources We tested our materials with teens and revised them based on participant feedback. We used click testing to get feedback on the materials within a limited budget and to focus on the areas that most resonated with participants or needed improvement. Creating Resources That Resonate With Teens From our formative research, we learned that teens gravitate to real-life, first-person stories on peer-to-peer messaging platforms like TikTok and YouTube. We crafted vlog-style videos, posters, and social media that focus on the personal experiences of teens. We developed a look and feel that combines the bright, welcoming look of these popular apps with encouraging and relatable messages. Following Clear Writing Best Practices In keeping with the focus on authentic personal stories, our materials showcase quotes from teens who have been through natural disasters. On social media graphics and posters, we added a brief call to action directing viewers to CDC resources. On the posters, we also incorporated a short introduction to set the stage and provide context for the experience of our participants with natural disasters (Figure 1). In writing the supplemental content, we followed clear writing best practices that included: • Adopting a casual, empathetic tone. • Putting the most important information first. • Incorporating a strong call to action. • Keeping sentences simple. With this approach, we kept the focus on the personal stories of teens, making the materials more relatable to our priority audience. Adapting to the COVID-19 Pandemic The pandemic presented some additional challenges to the production of these materials. We had already decided to prioritize vlog-style videos when it became clear that we would not be able to film in person due to social distancing guidelines. We quickly pivoted to conducting interviews over Zoom, enabling our teen participants to share their stories from home. We also needed compelling images of our teen participants to feature on our posters and social media graphics. Zoom screenshots and photos taken at home proved dicult to incorporate into our materials due to image quality. To get professional-quality images that aligned with our look and feel, we set up socially distanced photoshoots for several of our participants. Teen participants and their parents were thrilled with the outcome and the final photos (Figure 2). As many families and communities confront the e ects of climate change and escalating natural disasters, these relatable and empathetic materials will be resources to help teens cope with stress during a dicult time in their lives. Corresponding Author: Traci Augustosky, Team Lead, Writer-Editor Services, Oce of Communication, National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4770 Buford Highway, Atlanta, GA 30341. Email: tee1@cdc.gov. References Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022). Environmental Justice Dashboard. https://ephtracking.cdc.gov/Applications/ ejdashboard/ Lai, B.S., & La Greca, A. (2020). Understanding the impacts of natural disasters on children (Child Evidence Brief, no. 8). Society for Research in Child Development. https:// www.srcd.org/sites/default/files/resources/ FINAL_SRCDCEB-NaturalDisasters_0.pdf National Child Traumatic Stress Network. (n.d.). Disasters. https://www.nctsn.org/whatis-child-trauma/trauma-types/disasters U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2020, October 14). Disaster recovery: COVID-19 pandemic intensifies disaster recovery challenges for K-12 schools. https:// www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-62r Example of a Poster That Features Jaylon’s Experience FIGURE 1 Example of a Social Media Graphic That Features Abby’s Experience FIGURE 2
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