A Parent's Determination Helps a School District Stop a Head Lice Epidemic

Ellen Swadley's Efforts Instrumental in University Led Testing Program

September 1, 2000,
Key West, Fl: As a nurse, Ellen Swadley had been trained to deal with head lice. But as a mother, she had no control over the lice problems at her child's Key West, Florida school. Ellen's daughter Francine had been infested four times in second grade, five times in third grade, and now, as a fourth grader, she was infested again.

"I didn't know what to do," said Swadley. "We tried everything: Nix, Rid, even Mayonnaise. We could get rid of the lice temporarily, but they kept coming back."

"Francine was missing school because of the 'no-nit' policy, and she was falling behind in her work. Also, parents were telling kids not to play with other kids, friendships were ruined, and the school was in a panic. It seemed like every day they were finding lice on one or two kids in each class."

Even worse, Swadley believed that the chemicals in the head lice products she tried were damaging her daughter's health. Francine was asthmatic, and Ellen thought the lice products she was using were making her asthma worse. "I hated putting those chemicals on her head all the time," she said. Francine was getting headaches, stomach aches and asthma attacks.

After two years of almost constant infestation, Ellen Swadley was fed up. "I was so frustrated. I felt it the school wasn't living up to its responsibility to deal with the problem," recalls Swadley. She called school district Superintendent Michael Lanon to complain. "I told the Superintendent that I had done everything to get rid of the head lice, but they kept returning," said Swadley. The Superintendent had coincidentally been planning to allow a University of Miami entomologist Terri Meinking to conduct a test program using alternative lice treatments at another of the district's schools, but upon hearing Ellen's' story, decided to shift the program to Ellen's daughter's school.

"I know I was ready to try anything," says Ellen Swadley. "I was tearing my daughter's hair out trying to get rid of these bloodsucking pests."

At Lanon's suggestion, Swadley called Professor Meinking. Meinking explained that she had been interested in testing alternative lice treatments, and had developed a study to test the validity of home remedies such as olive oil and mayonnaise and compare them to the drug store brands Nix and HairClean 1-2-3. Meinking suggested Ellen become a volunteer and help execute the study.

"My personal experience with mayonnaise and Nix was negative," Swadley remembered. "But I was very excited and hopeful that this scientific approach might actually solve our school's lice problem."

To perform the tests, over 1000 students in Key Largo and Homestead were screened for lice, and 53 were found to be infested.

"I helped with the screenings and treatments in Terri Meinking's study," says Swadley. " HairClean 1-2-3, the only treatment I hadn't heard of, was getting fantastic results. When we applied the HairClean, the lice would run off of the kids' heads, squirm for a minute, and then die."

"HairClean also made it easier to see the nits and comb them out," continued Swadley, "and HairClean was cosmetically superior to Nix. It made my daughter's hair soft and shiny. I felt good that it was a natural product."

Meinking's study found that after two treatments, one week apart, HairClean 1-2-3 Lice Remover was 98% effective and Nix was 89% effective at eliminating head lice. The home remedies were dropped from the study because they were significantly less effective.

"Now, lice infestations at the school do not occur nearly as frequently as they did before," notes Swadley. "HairClean 1-2-3 has become our first defense against head lice because it really works."

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