iQ Solutions is an information, communications, and education firm that applies leading technologies to improve quality of life for all Americans. By applying the right combination of disciplines and expertise to the right issues, we exceed expected results and create solutions that make a lasting positive impact.
By Vera Nordalm,M. Ed., Senior Communications Manager
In 2009, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) launched its first comprehensive Physicians’ Outreach Initiative, NIDAMED, which gives medical professionals tools and resources to screen their patients for drug use. The initiative stresses the importance of the doctor-patient relationship in identifying unhealthy behaviors before they become life-threatening conditions.
A key NIDA objective is to increase access to effective addiction treatment by encouraging physicians to consult with, screen, and refer patients who need treatment. The NMASSIST (NIDAMED Alcohol, Smoking, and Substance Involvement Screening Test) online screening tool is designed to facilitate doctor-patient conversations about drug abuse. It helps caregivers evaluate the role of drugs in a patient’s life, gauge the patient’s capacity to make needed changes, and refer patients who are in need of treatment.
The questions guide the clinician in assessing a patient’s current drug use. The tool screens for 11 types of drug use, from tobacco products and methamphetamine to prescription opioids. It focuses on the amount and frequency of drug use, what triggers the behavior, attempts the patient has made to stop using the drug, and the rate of success. The screening process generates a score for each patient: a high, moderate, or low level of risk for drug addiction. Each risk level provides next steps for the physician and the patient, including reinforcement of healthy behaviors, and referral where needed.
The NMASSIST tool will help clinicians save time, pinpoint the patient’s problem, and identify an appropriate response. It allows doctors who see large numbers of patients to provide rapid, but personalized, service that detects drug use early and prevents the escalation to abuse and addiction.
Let’s face it: Americans have plenty of information about dietary supplements. Newspapers, magazines, TV, and Web sites are constantly promoting products that are supposed to make us healthier. Not all of the information is bad. In fact, research has shown that for the right condition, dietary supplements can be good for your health when they’re taken at the right intervals and in the correct dosage. Still, nearly 50 percent of the public who take dietary supplements don’t know who they can trust.
The Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) aims to change that. For many years, ODS has maintained a Web site full of evidence-backed research about dietary supplements. Now, with its new iPhone app, My Dietary Supplements (MyDS), it’s ready to go where few Federal agencies have dared to go-into the pockets of the American public.
At no charge, My Dietary Supplements mobile app provides individuals with the ability to enter, store, and, in a secure environment, share with their care givers the supplements they take. It allows individuals to track their supplements, review what they consume, learn more, and collaborate with their doctor in order to avoid potential conflicts with medications. In addition, the app provides access to a vast repository of ODS information on dietary supplements. New features to come may include a Web 2.0-like question and comment option, as well as Spanish versions of fact sheets.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about opening up Government data and making it available to the public. For ODS, mobile apps are the logical channel of communication for delivering its information, so people can find out how to live in a healthy way-where they are. And they are: On the move.
You know the science fiction movies where the aliens are super smart beings who look down on human intelligence and inventions as inferior? Well, I have been pondering how they achieved their intelligence. Was it nature or nurture? How will the human race evolve? Kids seem smarter today, don’t they? They are quick to pick up technology, to make connections. Little wonder-they spend all day sharing information and being connected.
On August 12, in a report in the New York Times, there was a story about a massive collaboration between the National Institute on Aging and Alzheimer’s researchers that has led to progress in understanding the biological markers that show the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in the human brain.
“It was unbelievable,” said Dr. John Q. Trojanowski, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s not science the way most of us have practiced it in our careers. But we all realized that we would never get biomarkers unless all of us parked our egos and intellectual-property noses outside the door and agreed that all of our data would be public immediately.”
The key was opening up research to others in the field, combating what is inherent in medical research: many different scientists in many different universities doing their own research with their own patients and with their own methods. Sites like PatientsLikeMe have been forerunners in aggregating and sharing patient data on life-changing conditions through the sharing of health profiles and shared learning. Indeed, a mantra of founder Jamie Haywood is “Privacy is a selfish act.”
So, as we venture into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Health Marketing Conference this week, looking to hang on every word spoken by luminaries like Jay Bernhardt and Craig Lefebvre, and to hear presentations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP), let’s be on the lookout for the shiny new ideas issuing from those iPads, each revealing today’s equivalent of “An Apple a Day,” knowing that “Sharing Is Good for Your Health.”
The Third Annual National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing and Media is coming to a close. It was a fabulous couple of days of sharing and learning. Our only regret is not being able to be a part of every session that took place. The ones we attended were ripe with lessons learned that can be immediately applied to our work, and to the work of our clients.
Below is our “Top 10 Lessons Learned” from the conference. Some of the insights were “ah ha” moments, where we heard an idea that just clicked. Others were things we’ve been preaching all along. And still others were themes that were so prevalent throughout the conference that it would be hard to write a summary and not include them. We hope that you find them helpful.
Consistent Themes
1.Social Media is the Wave of the Future-Enter or You Will Be Left Behind. A frequent theme throughout the conference was one we agree with wholeheartedly. Social media is happening NOW. Don’t wait until you have it all figured out-it will never happen. Get started now. Sanjay Koyani with FDA offered a nice summary of lessons learned from his efforts, which seemed to mirror others and our own experiences: 1) Start somewhere: Evolution versus revolution; 2) Start by just listening; 3) Start with low risk, high impact web 2.0 tools, such as Twitter; 4) Don’t recreate the wheel; partner with other agencies to increase your footprint, maximize your resources, and extend your reach; 5) Listen to the wisdom of the crowds; and 6) usability test to evaluate goodness.
2.Don’t Use Technology for Technology’s Sake. While there was strong consensus about the importance of stepping into social media, we also heard many presenters talk about the importance of making sure that technology is supporting your social marketing objectives, rather than driving your efforts. Know the goals you are trying to achieve and then choose the best platforms to achieve them, rather than riding the technology wave and forgetting your end goal. Our own Jennifer Isenberg Blacker discussed this at length during her presentation on NIDA’s social marketing efforts.
3.Don’t Abandon Traditional Media. Many presenters agreed with the idea that social media is an important way to reach your audiences where they are, but you can’t abandon traditional media. Social media should complement traditional outreach strategies and help extend the reach of social marketing and health marketing programs. Think of social media as one more vehicle that should be integrated into your overall social marketing efforts.
4.People Prefer to be Rewarded Today. One of the biggest challenges with social marketing is that we are asking people to give up something now for a benefit they will get in the future. The challenge that Michael Rothschild and several other presenters offered was to think creatively about whether there was a way to offer an immediate benefit (even if it’s not the ultimate end goal). Some interesting food for thought as we design future efforts.
5.Know Your Audience. And Listen. Another powerful theme was the importance of listening. Multiple people talked about the importance of developing audience-centric campaigns, a basic social marketing pillar. Others talked about the power of social media in following, learning, and understanding your audience. And Mark Weber from SAMHSA talked about the innovative approach SAMHSA is using to partner with mental health and substance abuse groups to help influence health care reform. What was interesting is that each of the presenters was talking about “listening” with different audiences and in different ways, reminding us that we need to be listening and not leaping through the phases of social marketing programs.
Other Insights
6.Change the Power Relationship. During a pre-conference workshop on health literacy, Bill Smith asked the interesting question, “How come the same person who feels comfortable going into a restaurant and asking a waitress questions about a menu will not go into a doctor’s office and ask questions about a surgery they are about to get?” The answer is obvious, and it offers very powerful insights as you think about the development of health literate social marketing campaigns.
7.Judge Social Media on the Platform, Not the Content. Another presentertold a story about how he had originally judged YouTube by the content on it and determined that there was no way a government agency would ever post there. He eventually realized that it wasn’t about the content, but about the platform that it offered. YouTube is now the second largest search engine, beating out Yahoo, Bing and Microsoft! This insight about judging the platform versus the content is an important one that offers helpful insights as we are evaluating other social media tools. Think about Second Life-a great platform for training and engaging, but the content is likely a turn-off to many. Is it a platform that more government agencies should be engaging with?
8.In Tough Economic Times, You Must Figure Out the ROI. Nancy Lee outlined the steps one should take to develop a return on investment model so you can compare, for example, the cost per program to help people quit smoking vs. the cost per taxpayer to pay for their health care costs. The model was very simple to implement and offers a way to demonstrate the value and effectiveness of your program to policy makers and funders during these tough economic times.
9.Think of Government as a Platform That Provides the Content, Not the Final Product. Erin Edgertonwith CDC talked about rethinking the role that government plays in disseminating information. Web 2.0 is about providing a means for people to use the government’s content. The hope is that other organizations will take the content, repurpose it, make it more user-friendly, and disseminate it to larger audiences. She specifically discussed the creation of a widget used during the peanut recall that people could download to their sites. As information about product recalls changed, every site that had the widget was automatically updated. If you create useful content, people will use it.
The conference theme, “Participation Powers Prevention” also deserves attention. Many delegates and speakers asked: Now what? Where do we go from here? How does my organization or group move the needle? The answer: participation. Whether it’s meeting with your city council in person, joining in the development of our nation’s health priorities through Healthy People 2020, or helping to create the new social marketing association mentioned above, this is participation. And, it can be leveraged for prevention, for healthier communities, and for a greater public dialogue.
Take the podium-What take-aways would you offer as #11, #12, etc?
By Kim Callinan, Senior Vice President of Communications and Social Marketing
Another fruitful day at the CDC Conference on Health Communication, Marketing and Media with terrific insights and lessons learned. One thing that rings true for me in my own work and was abundantly clear throughout the conference is that we are all trying to figure out what social media means for the profession. No question it’s emerging. The question is in what direction is it going?
This is another place where social marketers and health communications professionals can look at political campaigns for guidance. During the 2008 presidential campaign, we witnessed-and many even participated in-the power of social media. President Obama raised a record half billion dollars online during his campaign and more than two million people created online profiles on my.barackobama.com. Many, if not most, political pundits have cited his use of social media as one of the primary reasons he won the election. In particular, the campaign was effective at turning campaign supporters into ambassadors who represented the campaign to “swing voters.”
This is a strategy that offers huge opportunity for health communications efforts.
I can remember as an eight-year-old child convincing my grandparents who had both smoked for 20 years to quit smoking. It was on a car trip to Florida that I finally sealed the deal: I crawled under my grandmother’s stall in a bathroom at a rest stop. She was sneaking a cigarette because she didn’t want to listen to any more lectures or see any more tears from me. (I assume the tears were the more powerful persuader, but I didn’t know enough to ask at eight.) She put the cigarette out and said, “I give up. You win.” And that was the last cigarette she ever smoked. I was the right messenger-perhaps the only messenger-who could be so persuasive without turning her off. Social media offers the power to create ambassadors who can engage in one-on-one conversations in ways that television, radio, and print could not possibly replicate. It offers huge potential for public health campaigns.
While social media is evolving and changing, it’s often hard for health communications specialists to know which trends will last and which will pass. We should keep an eye on political campaigns to evaluate the effectiveness of potential strategies. Campaigns are governed by far fewer privacy restrictions and regulations than government efforts and are able to adapt quicker. This offers us the opportunity to observe which trends stick and which don’t. Of course, most of us will then need to figure out how to apply these strategies in the much more tightly controlled world of government regulations that we operate in. But that’s a blog for another day!
If you are interested in reading more lessons learned from political campaigns that can be applied to public health campaigns, please check out my post from earlier today. I’m enjoying blogging about this topic, so more to come.
By Kim Callinan, Senior Vice President of Communications and Social Marketing
Today I had the pleasure of attending the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing and Media. It dawned on me when listening to Bill Novelli’s keynote speech that while politics can be intense and combative, health communications professionals can learn a lot from analyzing and implementing the strategies that political campaigns use to elect candidates to office.
I spent the first ten years of my career working to elect political candidates to office. Similar to social marketing campaigns, political campaigns are about behavior change. These campaigns are trying to convince supporters to volunteer on their campaign or donate money, persuade likely supporters to register to vote, persuade swing voters to vote for a particular candidate, or convince a supporter to vote on Election Day.
The added benefit of political campaigns (or at least high profile “targeted” campaigns) is that significant resources are spent and significant analysis is done to assess the effectiveness of these efforts. This offers health communications professionals an opportunity to figure how to apply these strategies to our work.
Below are some “lessons learned” from political campaigns that can be applied to social marketing efforts:
Target narrowly:Political campaigns spend a significant amount of time identifying their target audience—they figure out who are the base voters (the people who are already going to support them); who hates them and will never change their mind; and who are the “swing voters,” the people who have not made up their minds or might change their minds. Typically, 10% - 35% of the electorate are “swing voters” in a given campaign and the vast majority of the resources are spent figuring out who these voters are and developing communications materials and strategies to reach only these voters.
All too often in public health, we are targeting very broad audiences—the “general public” or “health professionals.” What does this mean? It means that we are spending a significant amount of time communicating with people who are not affected by the disease under discussion or will not be persuaded to change their behavior regardless of what we say to them. And it means that we are not spending as many resources as we can talking with those people who might be persuaded if they were made aware of the requested behavior change.
Invest in research: Effective political campaigns spend considerable resources in qualitative and quantitative research to understand their target audiences. It’s common for a high profile senate campaign to conduct a baseline survey to gauge awareness and trends and to identify target audiences; multiple rounds of focus groups to help with message development and to test the advertisements; and tracking surveys throughout the campaign and especially during the final weeks to assess the effectiveness of communications efforts and make midcourse adjustments. Based on the results, an advertisement might be pulled down, more money might be is invested in a certain advertisement or in a certain market, or a candidate’s response to a crisis might be modified.
When was the last time that a health communications effort that you were a part of spent this amount of resources on research? Some large efforts do, but all too often this important step is skipped. Political campaigns, which are carefully scrutinizing every dollar spent, invest in research because they have seen time and time again that the investment pays off.
Make use of multiple channels:A cornerstone of successful political campaigns is the use of multiple channels. Why? Because it takes multiple contacts to persuade a person to change his or her mind. (For political campaigns, media buyers often purchase enough air time for 30+ repetitions among the target audience.) Messages are delivered on television, radio, and in print; through direct mail; via the telephone with live and recorded messages; in churches; online through web sites, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and more; and through partnerships with various constituencies including environmental groups, unions, women’s groups, and many others.
By the last few weeks of the campaign—a well-run and well-funded campaign—the target audience has to work hard to escape the campaign message. What’s the end result? An increase in voter turnout, more voters persuaded to vote for their candidate, and ultimately a victory on Election Day. And often, political strategists can point to tracking polls that show exactly which messages moved voters, where the voters lived, and when their minds were changed.Behavior change—whether it’s for a political campaign or focused on public health issues—requires the messages to be delivered to the same target audience multiple times.
Many of the successful efforts that we have heard about over the past day at the CDC Conference clearly are using multiple channels to reach their audiences; however, it’s just as common for public health efforts to be focused on the development of a brochure or a poster with little thought given to the dissemination channels.
While health communications professionals can learn a lot from watching, understanding, and studying political campaigns, I recognize that there are also differences between the two—one of the biggest being that most health communications efforts must sustain the behavior change over time. It’s not enough to get somebody to eat healthy one day out of a year. We must figure out how to create the excitement and interest to sustain this commitment over time.That’s an even harder task.
Despite this difference, and many others, we can learn a lot by studying, understanding, and implementing strategies employed on political campaigns. If this is a topic that interests you, check back for future posts.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) kicks off its three-day National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing and Media in Atlanta, August 11. It should come as no surprise that communicating health information through social media will be the hot topic all week. The uptick in .Gov communications and the popularity of social media among young people are creating new realities (and opportunities) for health communicators. Jennifer Isenberg Blacker, VP for Health Communications, will discuss IQ Solutions’ collaboration with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) during a Tuesday afternoon breakout session, “Social Media Tools in Health Promotion.”
Jennifer’s presentation focuses in detail on case studies of NIDA’s use of social media to reach young people. Example: For its Drugs + HIV > learn the link campaign, NIDA used 2.0 strategies to increase views among YouTube audiences of its English-language PSA (by 390 percent) and its Spanish PSA (by 640 percent), and to boost traffic to its web site by 56 percent. NIDA also teamed with AIDS.gov and BlogCatalog to invite bloggers from many countries to participate in “Bloggers for World AIDS Day” and raise awareness among their peers. “The key to success is to involve youth in the process,” Jennifer says. “In fact, the next campaign on prescription drug misuse/abuse among teens includes peer-to-peer online and offline elements.” See the National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing and Media.
Buzz has been building for a while now as delegates, organizers and presenters make their final preparations for next week’s National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing and Media. Hosted by the CDC’s National Center for Health Marketing and the Office in Enterprise Communications, the conference is packed with discussion about health marketing, health disparities, new frontiers in technology, and collaboration.
IQ Solutions’ own VP of Health Communications, Jennifer Isenberg Blacker, will also be presenting on behalf of the National Institute on Drug Abuse about the use of new technologies to engage youth. Senior VP of Communications and Social Marketing, Kim Callinan, and myself will also be there to cheer her on and gain insights from other presenters, as well as share in community with other health evangelists.
As the IQ Solutions team preps for our journey down to Atlanta, I’ve identified five ways to prepare for this year’s CDC Conference:
1. Network. Nedra Weinreich has set up a community on NING, a social network that lets you create your own social community. Already boasting 60+ members, this public platform enables us to network before, during, and after the conference, and is how I learned that the CDC program book was available for download.
2. Follow the conversation. Whether you are signed up for Twitter or not, you can still follow the conversations that are happening there. Using the tool Twitter Search, type in the hashtag “#NCHCMM09” to see what people are saying about the conference. I will also be live-tweeting certain presentations and added insights through IQ Solutions’ new Twitter handle, @iQSolutions.
3. Create your own conference dashboard. If you want to be a real superstar like Chris Brogan or Christopher Penn, you can even create your own conference dashboard using iGoogle, Netvibes, or PageFlakes. The dashboard, Brogan explains, is a one-stop online location “to see the elements you might want to know about at a conference…and you can get a fast scan of a lot of data that might prove useful during the event.” Example information may include adding some Twitter search strings to your dashboard, integrating a local map, local clock, local weather information, and much more. See an example below.
4. Meet-Up and Tweet-Up. They say at conferences that some of the best insights and conversations are those you have with colleagues in the hallways or over a great meal. Don’t miss out on these nuggets of opportunity for sharing. Already, CDC’s Justin Williams has organized a Tweet-up for Wednesday, August 12th from 7:30-10:30pm at STATS. This is one more opportunity to gather and meet with colleagues. Already attending are Craig Lefebvre, Andre Blackman, Susannah Fox and myself. Join us.
5. Study. It’s always good to know what you’re getting yourself into. Thus, I recommend checking out the conference’s Web site, seeing who’s who, as well as downloading and reading through the program book. Studying may be overkill, but as I mentioned earlier, this conference is packed with powerful presentations-so much so, that if you’re like me, you’re going to have to prioritize what you can attend. It’s not possible to see every single presenter, even though you’ll want to! (This is another good reason Tip #2 and Tip #3 come in handy-you can catch what you may be missing during concurrent presentations.)
Your Turn: What other tips might you offer to prep for this year’s conference?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) kicks off its three-day National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing and Media in Atlanta, August 11. It should come as no surprise that communicating health information through social media will be the hot topic all week. The uptick in .Gov communications and the popularity of social media among young people are creating new realities (and opportunities) for health communicators. Jennifer Isenberg Blacker, VP for Health Communications, will discuss IQ Solutions’ collaboration with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) during a Tuesday afternoon breakout session, “Social Media Tools in Health Promotion.”