Social Marketing at the Intersection of Programmatic Design and Policy, System and Environment Changes

Background:  At a higher-level, Spokane Regional Health District’s (SRHD’s) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed) grant focuses on implementation of a multilevel approach to support healthy behavior change among low income adults and seniors in Spokane County. The social marketing campaign is one of three activities identified, along with 2) developing a model for Community Health Advocate (CHA) activities in Spokane and 3) focusing on policy, systems and environment (PSE) changes to influence healthier behaviors.

Program background:  The My Healthy Life campaign is designed to support those who are eligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits (Basic Food) in reaching their goals to get healthier. Specifically, overcoming barriers to eating more fruits and vegetables, getting more physical activity and choosing lower-fat dairy items. The campaign uses a multi-faceted, inclusive approach to increase awareness of healthier opportunities. Its best-practice foundation is peer testimonials that present solutions to common barriers. These messages are then amplified through numerous other channels:

• Interactive website featuring testimonials, resources, and call-to-action
• Television advertising
• Targeted digital/new media advertising (mobile and web)
• Local news media web advertising (newspaper, broadcast)
• Radio advertising
• Earned media including broadcast, print and radio features
• Social media engagement and paid strategies
• Print collateral with resources and call-to-action
• Presentations at community events, stakeholder trainings and partner gatherings
• E-blasts and other digital strategies
• Internal SRHD communication

Nearly two dozen affordable, simple solutions are offered in this multi-channel approach. Behavioral theory and research results guided these communication channel selections, largely derived from market segmentation and based on reach and reliability. Aside from message recognition and recall, a primary campaign goal was to drive traffic to the website and encourage call-to-action. The social marketing campaign was approved by U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Services (USDA FNS) and subsequently re-funded to expand on these proven outreach strategies.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  Utilizing data specific to preferred channels and trusted sources from statistically-significant survey, the outreach methodology represents coverage of around 93 percent (confidence interval: 95%) of Spokane’s <185% FPL population. The methodology ensures a specific reach of 54 percent to SNAP-eligible individuals, surpassing USDA’s requirement to deliver over 50 percent of purchased media impressions to individuals living in <185% FPL households

Conclusions: In addition to driving a number of practice approaches within a newly-adopted CHA model, and defining effective policy, system and environment changes, the formative analysis used in this social marketing campaign resulted in an estimated 20,483,329 total impressions with over 54% (11,054,604) reaching SNAP-eligible individuals.

Implications for research and/or practice: Many of the innovative social marketing approaches used with the My Healthy Life campaign support the emerging needs of public health to impact community health with a mutli-faceted approach. For practioners looking to move well beyond a traditional direct education approach and substantiate their effots with robust, measurable data, this presentation is a must.