Hometown Heroes: Bringing Big Government to Small Markets

Background: CDC is the leading resource for public health science and data in the United States. Our communications campaigns and media efforts target national audiences, resulting in broad reach but often limited local impact. Local media are valuable public health partners, yet they are less likely to report on issues if these issues are not impacting their community.

Program background: We developed the Hometown Heroes initiative to broaden CDC’s reach in local media markets; inform the public about the work CDC does to improve the health, safety and security of the nation; highlight the exemplary work of our staff; and to inspire a new generation of public health professionals.

Evaluation Methods and Results: Beginning in February 2015, we recruited CDC candidates for Hometown Heroes through the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Media Training Day and word of mouth. Qualifying candidates worked for CDC during an outbreak response, worked on a priority project for the agency, or were members of a new EIS class. Communications staff researched each candidate’s local media market and crafted a tailored media pitch that relayed how the employee’s work was impacting the local community. If the Hometown Hero was an EIS officer, communications staff would also craft a media pitch for alumni publications to increase college students’ awareness of the EIS program. Between February 2015 and February 2017, 74 Hometown Hero stories were published in local newspapers or alumni publications in 29 states, out of 255 pitches sent. A total of 59 articles were published in newspapers, 15 were published in alumni publications. Nearly a third of the stories were about Hometown Heroes who worked on CDC’s Ebola response, 18% of the stories were about Hometown Heroes who worked on CDC’s Zika response, 43% were about the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and the remaining stories were about agency priority topics (flu, heart health, antibiotic resistance, sodium, HIV/AIDS, anti-bullying).  The local publications had broad reach within their communities such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer (circulation 198,424), The Virginian Pilot (circulation 108,162) and the Toledo Blade (circulation 73,224). Articles were promoted across CDC’s social media platforms to further broaden communications reach.

Conclusions: By working through small media markets, we were able to effectively inform hundreds of thousands of Americans of the valuable work the agency is doing to protect their health. Hometown Heroes communicated the value of the EIS program to a new college population, hopefully inspiring the next generation of public health professionals. In the future, we plan to expand recruitment for Hometown Heroes, increase the number of pitches sent, reach more states, and determine evaluation strategies for measuring market penetration and impact.

Implications for research and/or practice: The Hometown Heroes initiative is a scalable program that effectively penetrates local media markets and university publications. It is an effective communications tool that personalizes your organization’s work and reaches untapped markets. We will present information that details how organizations can build similar programs, and share the lessons learned during the first two years of our program.