Using Social Marketing Evaluation Strategies to Determine Penetration and Reach

Background: Southwest Georgia is among the most impoverished areas in the nation.  The City of Albany has 75,000 residents and Terrell County has 9,000 residents- Albany serves as the hub for retail, medical care, and education. Dougherty County is 60% minority and Terrell County is 75% minority. Rurality, single parent households, low educaitonal attainment, high teen pregnancy rates, high STD rates, high disability rates and unemployment rates contribute to poor health status.   

Program background: Albany State University, which is the site of the project, is an HBCU serving the south Georgia region. ASU has approximately 7,000 students and is undgoing a forced consolidation with a local community college. ASU offers Certificate, Bachelor's and Masters degrees. ASU was started as a vocational school to serve African-Americans in the highly segregated region. It has a long history of community service sharing knowledge and expertise to the region, with projects to improve the quality of life- especially for minorities. ASU's degree programs in Nursing Sciences, Criminal Justice, Education and the Master in Public Administration provide the region with professionals serving as leaders in the community. In 2015, ASU was awarded a MSI-CBO (Minority Serving Institution- Community Based Organization) grant of $750,000 to develop synergy between the resources of the University and the community to reduce the high rates of HIV among 18-24 year olds. Six Community Partners, including Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital- Network of Trust Teen Parenting Program (NOT), Family Connections in both Dougherty and Terrell Counties, Second Chance Re-entry Program, Lily Pad SANE Center Inc., the faith community and other community organizations joined with ASU in the implementationof 6 CDC Evidence-Based Programs, designed for these high risk groups served by the organizations. The SAMHSA Strategic Framework was used to develop plans for the project.  Project STOP (Students Taking on Prevention) was the result of the planning process.

Evaluation Methods and Results: A strong evaluation component was built into the implementation of the programs- with a Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviors survey, Cross site survey comparing the region to other grantees across the nation and a survey which collected demographic information on campus and in the two counties. At the close of Year one progress and evaluation results were analyzed and lead to the devlopment of Social/marketing intercept survey thatwoudl measure the penetration, reach, knowledge, motivation to change, self-efficacy and use of condoms to prevent HIV transmission.  It is this evaluation method whtat is presented in this panel discussion.

Conclusions: Process, Outcome and Impact studies show results of a project, but deeper understanding of the target population and its relationship to project improvement.

Implications for research and/or practice: Knowledge of the social/marketing results questionnaire is helping the project to fine tune the program and change specific populations.