Connecting the Dots: Using Digital Media to Measure Behavior Change In Public Health Campaigns

Background: Public health communicators consistently find it hard to show that any type of communication intervention really results in an individual’s changed behavior. In most cases, intermediate outcomes are used to show progress along a continuum with the anticipation being that these intermediary steps will lead to the longer-term changes. Digital media, as a newer medium, with its real-time data collection and ability for optimization, helps bridge this. This presentation will demonstrate the digital media used in a couple of different public health communication campaigns, how it was selected to match the communication preferences of the distinct target audiences, the online survey measures that were used to evaluate the effort, and the results. 

Program background: In three different online health communication campaigns, one targeting 18-25 year olds promoting screening for genetic diseases, the second targeting a more general audience promoting influenza vaccination, and the third targeting health care providers to increase awareness of mild Traumatic Brain Injury management guidelines, the campaign evaluations demonstrated increases in intention to do the promoted behavior amongst the target populations. In all campaigns, ads were placed across 80+ different social environments like blogs, social networks and commenting and rating sites. They ran for 1-2 months and had various target audiences. The ads included key messaging and opportunities to visit the campaign websites and social media pages. 

Evaluation Methods and Results: With campaign click through rates of 0.11%, 0.89%, and 0.25% (results to-date), respectively, all three campaigns over delivered on their goal of driving traffic to the campaign websites (average click through rates are around .05%).What is more impressive, however, is that using an online control-exposed survey, results demonstrated a 20% increase in intention to get screened amongst those that saw the ads in the first campaign, a 24% increase in intention to get vaccinated amongst those individuals who could not remember the last time they got vaccinated or had never been vaccinated in the second, and a 44% increase amongst providers to research more information about mTBI guidelines in the next few weeks in the third campaign. 

Conclusions: Digital media and the use of correlating online surveys can provide data to show increased intention to change one's behavior. This is powerful for public health practitioners who need to deliver certain project outcomes and justify budgets as it shows a direct correlation between media spend and an impact on key determinants of behavior. 

Implications for research and/or practice:  Ultimately the availability of these channels and tools provides public health practitioners with the ability to get one step closer to their ultimate goal of measuring behavior change.