Promoting Preparedness Through Creative Communications: Lessons From the American Public Health Association's Get Ready Campaign

Background: Most Americans are aware they need to be prepared for emergencies such as tornadoes or disease outbreaks, yet individual preparedness varies. For example, a 2012 CDC study found about 95 percent of U.S. households had a working battery-operated flashlight, but only 54 percent had a three-day supply of water. And only 21 percent had a written evacuation plan. With traditional messages only going so far, there is a need to reach Americans in new ways to engage them in preparedness.

Program background: APHA's Get Ready campaign, online at www.APHAGetReady.org, helps Americans prepare themselves, their families and their communities for all disasters and hazards, including infectious diseases, natural disasters and other emergencies. The campaign takes science-based preparedness recommendations and presents them in a way that is attractive to the general public. The campaign includes free resources, including 50+ multilingual fact sheets, a website, Twitter account, e-newsletter, scholarship, annual national observance and Q&As. Get Ready uses partnerships to share its messages with health professionals and the general public. The campaign makes extensive use of new communication technologies to convey its messages. Among its creative approaches, the campaign has: produced a range of videos, including an animated short and a parody video to the tune of “Call Me Maybe” that gained more than 7,500 views; tapped into the popularity of “LOLCats” through a cat photo contest, with winning entries used in a preparedness calendar; created humorous e-cards with Valentine’s Day preparedness messages; held a preparedness songwriting contest, with titles such as “Pandemic Blues”; offered 30 podcasts on preparedness topics ranging from flu and first aid to digital preparedness and workplace readiness; held a recipe contest that challenged participants to create no-cook meals using emergency stockpile ingredients; created a preparedness fact sheet series for people with disabilities, with materials available in text, audio and ASL video formats; maintained an ongoing weekly blog with more than 300 posts that uses conversational language to convey information. The blog and other campaign outreach provides science-based information from experts but uses language and tone that is appropriate for a general audience.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  APHA has gauged success via participation in the campaign and uptake of materials. The campaign also facilitated a 2012 survey of Get Ready material recipients. The evaluation found that aspects of the campaign are working well, with participants reporting that it’s important to be prepared for an emergency at work or school (78 percent), that they have created their own stockpiles (54 percent) and that they felt better prepared because of the Get Ready materials (51 percent).

Conclusions:  Reaching out to Americans via creative methods and a range of communication tools can engage them in preparedness.

Implications for research and/or practice:  Science-based information and recommendations should be the basis of public health outreach campaigns, but the way that information is communicated matters. Information that is presented in a fun, easy-to-understand way has the potential to reach a wide audience and influence health decisions.