Students from Hawaii and Michigan are the national Grand Prize winners in this year’s “Fight the Bite” poster contest, co-sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the DEET Education Program. Introduced in 2007, the contest invites fifth- and sixth-graders to create educational posters encouraging children and adults to protect themselves against mosquito and tick bites and the diseases they can cause.
Safari Jones, 11, of Kapolei, Hawaii, won the national sixth-grade Grand Prize, and Mitchell Mast, 10, of Hart, Mich., won the national fifth-grade Grand Prize. Both will receive a check for $1,000 and an awards certificate. Their entries are posted on the contest website.
State winners, who will be announced next week, will receive a check for $50 and an award certificate.
Safari attends Kapolei Middle School, where her teacher, Daryle Mishina, quickly noticed she is extremely talented.
“I offered Safari a choice of entering an art contest instead of the required art project I have my other students do,” Mishina said. “She really put a lot of time and effort into her poster.”
Her mother, Sandi Jones, says her daughter is “constantly doodling at home.”
Mitchell attends Hart Middle School. Sarah Pioli is his teacher. His parents, Carol and Craig Mast, say Mitchell has been interested in art from a very young age.
“He’s very detail-oriented and has high expectations of himself in pretty much everything he does,” his mother said. “When Mitchell won a local poster contest this winter, we started looking for others and found the Fight the Bite contest. Mitchell loves the outdoors and thought a poster about insect repellant would be fun to draw.”
Emily Zielinski-Gutierrez, DrPH, a CDC medical anthropologist and creator of the contest, said:
“Clearly, educators around the U.S. are doing an exceptional job talking about ways to protect against mosquito and ticks bites, because we saw some terrific entries that emphasized the practical ways to avoid bites and prevent disease. I was thrilled to see so many creative posters, and I hope that all the students who entered learned more about this important issue while doing this project.
“We are delighted with the posters created by Safari and Mitchell,” said Susan Little, executive director of the DEET Education Program, which operates under the auspices of the Consumer Specialty Products Association. “Their entries are attractive, creative and informative, with a fun aspect to them.”
The contest judges included Little; Zielinski-Gutierrez; Ken August, development director, National Public Health Information Coalition; Jacques Colon, program associate, National Association of County and City Health Officials; Joe Conlon, technical advisor, American Mosquito Control Association; Sandi Delack, RN, president, National Association of School Nurses; John Jacob, risk communications manager, Massachusetts Department of Public Health; and Lyle Petersen, MD, MPH, director of CDC’s vector-borne disease division.
Public health educators and school nurses are being encouraged to include the posters in their educational materials.
Consumers can find information about diseases from mosquito and tick bites, repellent use and other prevention strategies, such as limiting standing water to reduce mosquitoes and landscape modification to discourage ticks, at websites such as www.cdc.gov/westnile, www.cdc.gov/lyme, and www.deetonline.org.
Available domestically since 1957, DEET is the world’s most widely used active ingredient in insect repellents. The CDC and other leading health authorities have long recommended these repellents. The American Academy of Pediatrics says repellents with up to 30 percent DEET can be used on children as young as two months of age.
The DEET Education Program is sponsored by Clariant Corp., S.C. Johnson & Son Inc., 3M Company and Vertellus Specialty Materials.
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