Stopping Upper Respiratory Infections and Flu in the Family: The Stuffy Trial

Colds and flu cause much loss of work and school. The purpose of this study is to try to reduce the transmission of colds and flu among household members with one of three interventions: some educational material, educational material and use of alcohol hand sanitizers, and educational material and use of alcohol hand sanitizers as well as face masks when somebody has symptoms of the flu. We will recruit 450 households in Northern Manhattan and each household will be randomly assigned to one of these three groups. We will then follow these households for 15 months to see how often they get cold and flu symptoms. We will also look at antibiotic use practices for symptoms of colds and influenza ; household member knowledge of prevention and treatment strategies for pandemic influenza and viral URIs; and rates of influenza vaccination among household members. When someone in the study has serious flu symptoms such as a high fever and cough or sore throat, we will also obtain a nasal culture (by swabbing the nose) to see if there is flu virus present.