Customizing a Social Marketing and Health Promotion Strategy for Effective Childhood Obesity Prevention Education Among Vulnerable Populations

Background:  A successful social marketing campaign seeking behavior change uses customized, compelling messages delivered through the audience’s preferred information channels. In the health arena such customized strategies are increasingly necessary to ensure effectiveness.¹  The Fulton County Partnerships to Improve Community Health (PICH) Program collaborates with community partners to create strategies that reduce health disparities and chronic disease incidence by increasing healthy nutrition options, physical activity opportunities, tobacco-/smoke-free environments and walkable, livable communities. PICH's outreach extends to all County areas but underserved urban communities are a point of emphasis. In order to engage with and achieve the desired impact in those populations, the communications strategies supporting PICH's outreach must therefore be highly tailored.

Program background:  To help instill better eating and physical activity habits in preschoolers from Fulton County, where an estimated 33% of children under 18 are overweight or obese,²  the PICH Program launched an initiative to provide free training and technical assistance to Early Care and Education (ECE) providers to help them develop and implement standards-based wellness protocols. The PICH Program supported the ECE recruiting efforts in underserved communities with a campaign combining social marketing and health promotion. The messages educated audiences about obesity rate disparities among demographic groups and chronic disease risks posed by obesity. They offered prevention strategies and explained how the PICH-funded ECE protocols would reinforce those strategies. PICH disseminated the information through online, broadcast and print media, as well as PICH partner channels that reached highly diverse audiences. The messages included images of children and staff from Atlanta day care centers to add authenticity and to increase identification and engagement. Some examples: a commercial airing on Atlanta's ratings leader WSB-TV showing local residents participating in ECE classes and other PICH projects; coverage of ECE activities on Fulton Government's cable TV station; a PICH-produced video spotlighting ECE that included testimonials from a day care center operator; plus, newsletter articles, Tweets and Facebook posts about child health topics with images from ECE centers.   

Evaluation Methods and Results:  Based on audited audience data and media impression reports provided by Twitter and Facebook, the PICH ECE-related campaigns reached over 380,000 people in 2016, earning 1.26 million impressions. Staffs from 49 day care centers adopted wellness policies in 2016 that impacted 14,800 students, parents and day care staff in high-obesity and underserved areas.

Conclusions:  PICH’s customized multi-platform campaign merging social marketing and health promotion helped the ECE team successfully engage the target audiences and achieve its outreach goals. 

Implications for research and/or practice:  Future strategies for addressing child obesity in underserved and high-obesity communities should include customized health education messages disseminated across the audiences’ preferred media channels to maximize engagement in the short term, and to create the potential to change behaviors and generate positive health outcomes in the long term.   ¹ Rimer, B. K., and Glanz, K. (2005). Theory at a glance: a guide for health promotion practice. ² Davila-Payan C, DeGuzman M, Johnson K, Serban N, Swann J. (2015). Estimating Prevalence of Overweight or Obese Children and Adolescents in Small Geographic Areas Using Publicly Available Data. Prev Chronic Dis 2015;12:140229. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5888/pcd12.140229