BACKGROUND:
Get Healthy Orlando is a local public/private partnership established to educate the community about health issues, involve them in active participation in events, and to effect long term community health status indicators. Efforts are divided into specific health issues campaigns to run over the course of six years. The first campaign is flu vaccinations in December 2003, then proceeding to childhood obesity, childhood immunizations, and exercise.

OBJECTIVE:
To describe public/private partnership development; educational efforts; community’s active participation in events designed to promote better health practices; and how to handle media coverage.

METHOD:
Focus on development of the flu prevention campaign that began with a series of media sponsored community education spots on local television and the coordination between local health agencies to provide three large scale free flu vaccination events during December 2003.

RESULT:
6,000 residents were immunized during three scheduled mass vaccination events, and captured over 780 nationwide major media outlet coverage hits. Due to mass media coverage and public concern over the flu vaccine shortage and flu related deaths, Get Healthy Orlando was able to pool community resources, buy additional flu vaccine, and sponsor a fourth mass vaccination event that immunized 1,000 residents. There were 1049 volunteer hours at a value of $44,649.

CONCLUSION:
Routine plans for community health campaigns can be overwhelmed due to unforeseen circumstances such as a public panic. The partnership must be agile enough to effectively respond to the community’s needs in order to ensure timely service provision, and in turn lead to developing a community bond that will help ensure the success of future health campaigns.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Describe the development of public/private partnerships, the effect of media coverage during a time of crisis, and the development of a communications matrix for rapid public information dissemination.