The Need for Digital Content Strategy in Public Health Programs

Background: As healthcare expenditures continue to rise in the U.S., greater resources have been focused on health prevention and promotion activities. Among these efforts are a considerable number of federal programs aimed at health education and behavior change. These programs tend to have a predominantly digital presence, which increases public accessibility to valuable information. However, only 12% of the U.S. population has a proficient health literacy level to obtain, process, and understand health information. For this reason, it is imperative we not only provide critical information, but ensure it is understandable and actionable among its intended audience.

Program background: In this vein, the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI’s) Smokefree.gov Initiative employs a sophisticated digital content strategy to influence optimal behavior change.  This program has been delivering web-based smoking cessation interventions to the public for over 10 years.  In an effort to make content more appealing and motivate users to change, NCI strategically expanded content topic areas beyond smoking cessation. Specifically, NCI’s Smokefree Women (SFW) website (women.smokefree.gov) provided its audience access to healthier lifestyle, weight management, and parenthood information.

Evaluation Methods and Results: In order to evaluate the efficacy of this content strategy on behavior, NCI designed a four-armed randomized control trial to measure changes in motivation, smoking behavior, and changes in diet and physical activity based on exposure to differing degrees of content.  Approximately 280 female smokers will be randomized to view 1 of 4 variations of the SFW website.  The websites include: 1) current website, 2) smoking cessation (SC) content only, 3) SC plus weight management content, and 4) SC plus healthier lifestyle content.

Conclusions:  Key findings (e.g. motivation to change, consumer perception, and participant web usage) will be presented. Additional content strategy tactics, such as the development of a plain language and brand message score card, will also be discussed.

Implications for research and/or practice: Evaluation of this comprehensive content strategy will provide valuable insight to help inform other health programs and increase the public’s ability to understand and act on health information.