Effect of Intervention to Improve Stroke Recognition

Despite the abundance of stroke education materials available, studies continue to reveal severe deficiencies in stroke literacy (knowledge of symptoms, urgent action, and prevention measures). Expensive mass media stroke education campaigns are not sustainable for this purpose, particularly in economically disadvantaged populations. Instead, the investigators propose to intervene in school classrooms with children aged 9 to 11 years, to teach the five cardinal stroke symptoms, the correct course of action when they occur, and to highlight the potential therapeutic benefit of early hospital arrival, with the intent that the children will then educate their parents. To help accomplish this, the investigators have developed a program called Hip Hop Stroke (HHS), which is comprised of rap songs and two animated musical cartoons that incorporate stroke knowledge.