The Initial Relationship Between the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Digital COVID-19 Public Education Campaign and Vaccine Uptake: Campaign Effectiveness Evaluation.

BACKGROUND: Over 1 million people in the United States have died of COVID-19. In response to this public health crisis, the US Department of Health and Human Services launched the We Can Do This public education campaign in April 2021 to increase vaccine confidence. The campaign uses a mix of digital, television, print, radio, and out-of-home channels to reach target audiences. However, the impact of this campaign on vaccine uptake has not yet been assessed. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to address this gap by assessing the association between the We Can Do This COVID-19 public education campaign's digital impressions and the likelihood of first-dose COVID-19 vaccination among US adults. METHODS: A nationally representative sample of 3642 adults recruited from a US probability panel was surveyed over 3 waves (wave 1: January to February 2021; wave 2: May to June 2021; and wave 3: September to November 2021) regarding COVID-19 vaccination, vaccine confidence, and sociodemographics. Survey data were merged with weekly paid digital campaign impressions delivered to each respondent's media market (designated market area [DMA]) during that period. The unit of analysis was the survey respondent-broadcast week, with respondents nested by DMA. Data were analyzed using a multilevel logit model with varying intercepts by DMA and time-fixed effects. RESULTS: The We Can Do This digital campaign was successful in encouraging first-dose COVID-19 vaccination. The findings were robust to multiple modeling specifications, with the independent effect of the change in the campaign's digital dose remaining practically unchanged across all models. Increases in DMA-level paid digital campaign impressions in a given week from -30,000 to 30,000 increased the likelihood of first-dose COVID-19 vaccination by 125%. CONCLUSIONS: Results from this study provide initial evidence of the We Can Do This campaign's digital impact on vaccine uptake. The size and length of the Department of Health and Human Services We Can Do This public education campaign make it uniquely situated to examine the impact of a digital campaign on COVID-19 vaccination, which may help inform future vaccine communication efforts and broader public education efforts. These findings suggest that campaign digital dose is positively associated with COVID-19 vaccination uptake among US adults; future research assessing campaign impact on reduced COVID-19-attributed morbidity and mortality and other benefits is recommended. This study indicates that digital channels have played an important role in the COVID-19 pandemic response. Digital outreach may be integral in addressing future pandemics and could even play a role in addressing nonpandemic public health crises.

Preferably professional rather than spiritual. Communicating offers of mindfulness promotion in the university setting

Background: Mindfulness training has become an increasingly important part of health management at universities. The need for this type of training has been reinforced by the massive limitations of presence education and social contacts due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) prevention. However, students are still quite reluctant to take part in such training, although their positive effects have been repeatedly proven. Objectives: Thus, the goal of our research was to examine perceptions and barriers among university students, and to deduce strategies for target-group oriented communication for mindfulness training. Methods: We conducted qualitative interviews with male and female students with low and high experience in mindfulness training. Results: It was shown that students prefer an ideologically neutral and evidence-based framing of the trainings. Emphasis of the spiritual background seems to limit the access for inexperienced users (although they are a relevant part for experienced users). In addition, it is important for the interviewed students that the advertisement for the mindfulness training depicts the relevance for academic and professional challenges without selling them as tools for performance enhancement. Conclusions: Although the roots of mindfulness training is spiritual, inexperienced users are skeptical about these aspects. This corresponds with more general discussions about the introduction of mindfulness training at universities. Furthermore, evidence for the selection of gatekeepers (authentic intermediaries) and the selection of message strategies (diverse exemplars) can be deduced. © 2021, The Author(s).

A National Communication Effort Addressing Maternal Mortality in the United States: Implementation of the Hear Her Campaign.

More than 700 women die each year in the United States from complications related to pregnancy, and considerable racial and ethnic disparities continue to exist. Recognizing the urgent maternal warning signs of pregnancy-related complications, getting an accurate and timely diagnosis and quality care can save lives. In August 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Reproductive Health launched a national communication campaign called "Hear Her" to raise awareness of urgent maternal warning signs during pregnancy and in the year after pregnancy and improve communication between pregnant or postpartum people and their support systems and health care providers. Storytelling is a central strategy to the campaign, which features video stories of women's experiences with pregnancy-related conditions to bring voices to the statistics and to help motivate action. These stories and additional campaign resources are disseminated through a website, digital media, organic (free) and paid social media, earned media, public service announcement distribution, and partners, with increased outreach to disproportionately affected communities. Partners in maternal and child health played an important role from campaign development to outreach and message dissemination. In the first year of the campaign, there were >390,000 unique visitors to the Hear Her website and 180 million impressions (number of times that content was displayed to a user) from digital and social media. Digital media allowed the campaign to reach priority audiences at a time when news and social media had a number of other urgent public health messages related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lieber professionell als spirituell. Die Kommunikation von Angeboten der Achtsamkeitsförderung im Hochschulsetting

ZusammenfassungHintergrundAngebote zur Achtsamkeitsförderung durch Stressbewältigung sind zunehmend ein wichtiger Teil des Gesundheitsmanagements in Hochschulen geworden. Der Bedarf dafür hat sich gerade in der COVID-19-bedingten („coronavirus disease 2019") Pandemiesituation deutlich verstärkt. Allerdings werden die Angebote von den Studierenden bislang noch sehr zögerlich in Anspruch genommen, obwohl die positiven Effekte von Achtsamkeitstrainings bereits vielfach belegt sind.Ziel der ArbeitZiel unserer Untersuchung war es daher, Vorstellungen der Achtsamkeitspraxis sowie Zugangsbarrieren zu erfassen, um daraus zielgruppenspezifische Kommunikationsstrategien abzuleiten.MethodeEs wurden männliche und weibliche Studierende (mit wenig und mit viel Erfahrung in Achtsamkeitstrainings) qualitativ interviewt.ErgebnisseEs zeigt sich, dass die Studierenden eine weltanschaulich neutrale und evidenzbasierte Rahmung der Angebote bevorzugen. Eine Betonung des spirituellen Hintergrunds der Achtsamkeitstrainings scheint v. a. den Einsteigern den Zugang zu erschweren (auch wenn sie für die Fortgeschrittenen ein relevanter Bestandteil ist). Zudem ist es den Interviewten wichtig, dass die Kommunikation die Relevanz für die Bewältigung akademischer und beruflicher Herausforderungen aufzeigt, ohne die Angebote als Maßnahme zur Leistungssteigerung zu bewerben.SchlussfolgerungAuch wenn die Achtsamkeitspraktiken spirituell verankert sind, stehen Einsteiger diesen Aspekten eher skeptisch gegenüber. Dies deckt sich mit allgemeineren Diskussionen zur Einführung von Achtsamkeitsangeboten an Hochschulen. Darüber hinaus lassen sich Hinweise zur Auswahl von Multiplikator:innen (authentische Vermittler:innen) und Botschaftsstrategien (vielseitige Fallbeispiele) ableiten.

"#I-Am-Engaged": Conceptualization and First Implementation of a Multi-Actor Participatory, Co-designed Social Media Campaign to Raise Italians Citizens' Engagement in Preventing the Spread of COVID-19 Virus.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced health authorities around the world to introduce public health measures to contain the risks of contagion. This greatly impacted on citizens' quality of life, often raising concerns and reactance. There is an ongoing urgent need to promote and sustain behavioral changes and adherence to preventive measures. Based on the theoretical framework of the Patient Health Engagement Model and a participatory co-design process, a social media campaign aimed at improving citizens' health engagement toward behavioral change for preventing the spread of COVID-19 was promoted in Italy in the early months of the pandemic. In this paper, we describe the methodological process adopted to develop the campaign, its characteristics, and the first results-in terms of audience reach and engagement in its early implementation. The discussion of this grounded-up and citizen-centered approach to social campaign development highlights key ways of promoting learning, engaging citizens, and supporting their participation in the co-production of educational interventions for behavioral change toward preventive actions.

Development and Early Implementation of a Public Communication Campaign to Help Adults to Support Children and Adolescents to Cope With Coronavirus-Related Emotions: A Community Case Study.

Epidemics and pandemics can traumatically impact the emotional wellbeing of adults, children, and adolescents in diverse ways. This impact can be reduced by applying a range of evidence-based coping strategies. Based on previous research, we created a pamphlet-based communication campaign designed to assist adults to provide support for young people confronted with emotional distress associated with the pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus [severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)] and the related disease [coronavirus disease (COVID-19)] in 2020. We developed a pamphlet describing the common emotions children and adolescents report feeling in the face of disasters and the coping strategies that have proven effective in mitigating them. The target population was adults who interact with children and adolescents in both formal and informal settings. The pamphlet included basic information on this specific emergency, emotions that might be commonly experienced, and coping strategies for dealing with negative emotions. The aim of this paper is to describe the planning, development, and implementation of the campaign. First, we monitored how the media gave visibility to the campaign during the 40 days following the release of the pamphlet: it potentially reached a large audience at a national and international level through at least 216 media channels included the HEMOT® (Helmet for EMOTions) website. Second, Google Analytics™ data from the HEMOT® website enabled us to examine the characteristics of the visitors to the website and the behavior of those who viewed the pamphlet. More than 6,000 visitors, most from Europe followed by the Americas, visited the website in the first 40 days after the pamphlet publication. The webpage including the pamphlet obtained over 6,200 views, most directly or via other websites. A cluster analysis suggested that the access to the webpage did not mirror the trend concerning the new cases of COVID-19 in Italy (which increased during the central phase of the campaign) or worldwide (which continued to increase across the 40 days). Third, data gathered with a convenience sample of adults who had consulted the pamphlet provided a perspective on the comprehensibility of the messages conveyed by the pamphlet and on the utility for children and adolescents. The process we have demonstrated in this example could be replicated in different communities and settings to respond to the spread of the COVID-19 or to respond to other widespread or more localized disasters.