ABSTRACT
Introduction. This case study describes the Massachusetts Childhood Obesity Research Demonstration Study (MA-CORD) health marketing campaign, examines the strategies used in such campaigns, and offers lessons learned to improve health marketing for future interventions. MA-CORD Health Marketing Components and Implementation. The three main components were an outdoor printed advertisement and texting campaign, social media with a focus on Facebook, and the Summer Passport Program, an event-based initiative in parks for children. The advertisements consisted of billboards, bus advertisements, and handouts. The text messaging component, which required families to actively text a keyword to join, had a low opt-in rate. Facebook page "likes" increased from 1,024 to 1,453 in New Bedford and from 175 to 1,091 in Fitchburg. Fitchburg received technical assistance and paid for ads on Facebook. The Summer Passport participation in parks ranged from 120 to 875 children with participation in the free park lunch program doubling in Fitchburg. Discussion. Key lessons learned are engage communication experts from each community at the beginning of the project, use text messaging components with in-person staff onsite to assist participants in the opt-in process, build momentum for a Facebook presence through purchasing Facebook advertisements, and partner with local park departments for programming.
Subject(s)
Health Promotion/organization & administration , Pediatric Obesity/prevention & control , Advertising/methods , Child , Child, Preschool , Communication , Female , Humans , Male , Massachusetts , Organizational Case Studies , Social Media , Text MessagingABSTRACT
Antibiotic resistance is one of today's most urgent public health problems, threatening to undermine the effectiveness of infectious disease treatment in every country of the world. Specific individual behaviours such as not taking the entire antibiotic regimen and skipping doses contribute to resistance development as does the taking of antibiotics for colds and other illnesses that antibiotics cannot treat. Antibiotic resistance is as much a societal problem as it is an individual one; if mass behaviour change across the population does not occur, the problem of resistance cannot be mitigated at community levels. The problem is one that potentially can be solved if both providers and patients become sufficiently aware of the issue and if they engage in appropriate behaviours. Although a number of initiatives have been implemented in various parts of the world to elicit behaviour change, results have been mixed, and there is little evidence that trial programmes with positive outcomes serve as models of sustainability. In recent years, several scholars have suggested social marketing as the framework for behaviour change that has the greatest chance of sustained success, but the antibiotic resistance literature provides no specifics for how the principles of social marketing should be applied. This paper provides an overview of previous communication-based initiatives and offers a detailed approach to social marketing to guide future efforts.
