Android :: Way To Know Another Thread's Handler Not Null Before Calling It?

My program threw a NullPointerException the other day when it tried to use a Handler created on another thread to send that thread a message. The Handler created by the other thread was not yet created, or not yet visible to the calling thread, despite the calling thread having already called start on the other thread. This only happens very rarely. Almost every test run does not get the exception. I was wondering what the best way is to avoid this problem for sure with minimal complication and performance penalty. The program is a game and very performance sensitive, especially once it is running. Therefore I try to avoid using synchronization after setup, for example, and would prefer to avoid spinning on a variable at any time.