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BACKGROUND: Acute Respiratory Infections (ARIs) result in a significant amount of morbidity and mortality in the United States and around the world. Research has shown that basic principles of hand washing reduce the transmission of respiratory infections such as asthma, influenza and pneumonia in school-aged settings. However, certain maladies such as ARIs continue to cause significant problem today – they are the third leading cause of mortality in the world. This leads healthcare providers, parents, researchers, and other community members to question how changes can continue to be made to solve this problem. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this research is to show how community education on proper hand hygiene would benefit the health of the general population and decrease the morbidity rate of patients with acute respiratory infections. METHODS: We researched different databases including EbscoHost, PubMed, and the South College Library Database to answer our proposed research question. We applied search terms such as “hand hygiene”, “prevention”, “respiratory issues”, and “acute respiratory infection. The search terms were limited to articles published within the last ten years, the English language, free full texts, those that were peer reviewed, and research done on humans. The investigators also applied various inclusion and exclusion criteria. RESULTS: Six articles were found to be eligible. After review of the six eligible articles, we determined three to be of the best levels of evidence for this literature review. CONCLUSION: The three articles demonstrated that proper hand hygiene can reduce the incidences of acute respiratory infections, but that many other variables need to be assessed.