Spokane Regional Health District employs several full-time Communications team members including a public information officer, graphic designer, web programmer and audio/video specialist. Together they represent 20+ years of experience in the Communications realm. These positions are a critical component of the district’s overall budget and are funded by a pool of programmatic money dedicated to shared administrative services.
Together, this team works jointly to provide strategic and integrated media and communication activities for health district programs, specific to key audiences. The team prides itself on continuously learning about the district’s audiences including seeking and capturing information about audiences and sharing trends with staff; listening via traditional and social media monitoring; involvement in surveys, focus groups, research audits, etc.; and analyzing web analytics for SRHD's various sites and subdomains, social media and other e-tools.
It’s important to have overlap.
Kim has taught herself to be able to do almost every aspect of Amy’s job.
Admin is trained in media (Kim’s job).
Amy’s trying to learn the ropes of Kim’s job.
Amy overlaps with the IS team.
The team enjoys comfort with numerous communication vehicles to include:
Written communications dispatched by poster, newsletter, banner, flyer, mail, etc. (Senior Falls conference)
Encourage employees to use the AP style guide and agency style guide (show in SharePoint).
Oral communications via PowerPoint presentation, speeches, group presentations, stakeholder meetings (Healthiest Workplace Award PowerPoint)
Online communications through use of internet, intranet, social media, e-mail, e-tools, online advertising (Facebook and Twitter)
Advertising via radio, television, print, billboard, bus bench, stanchion, etc.
Earned media through use of news releases, media advisories, press conference, relationships with journalists, etc.
Advertising via radio, television, print, billboard, bus bench, stanchion, etc. (WIC bus bench)
Media policy to address multiple spokespeople, trainings
Positive media relationships
Sharepoint team sites as project work sites
Let’s go to: http://teams/sites/Admin/communications/SNAP-EdCampaign/SitePages/Home.aspx
Briefly highlight examples of document storage/document versioning, calendar, tasks, agendas, libraries
Team members provide oversight for process and method, frequently relying on social marketing best practices as outlined by such leaders as Nancy R. Lee, Philip Kotler, and researchers at the Academy for Educational Development—the desired outcome always that the ‘what, when, who, where, how and why’ of a campaign is making sense to people on the receiving end.
Steps included in the team’s proven social marketing approach include:
establishing background, purpose and focus
situational investigation using strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis to include literature review, and environmental scan
market segmentation to account for demographics, size of audience, relevant behaviors
formation of marketing objectives and goals using SMART goals
determination of factors influencing behavior
The team exhibits daily an intimate familiarity with the common behavior theories used to effect societal change, namely, social cognitive theory, social influence theory, the social ecological model and the transtheoretical model (stages of change). They also rely on known constructs specific to these theories including barriers, motivation, normative beliefs, problem-solving, reciprocal determination, self-efficacy and self-management.
These formative analysis steps ultimately culminate in a marketing mix strategy that employs the 4Ps (product, price, place and promotion) and drives the promotion including messages, messengers, execution strategy, media channels and promotional items.
The team enjoys comfort with numerous communication vehicles to include:
Written communications dispatched by poster, newsletter, banner, flyer, mail, etc.
Oral communications via PowerPoint presentation, speeches, group presentations, stakeholder meetings
Online communications through use of internet, intranet, social media, e-mail, e-tools, online advertising
Advertising via radio, television, print, billboard, bus bench, stanchion, etc.
Earned media through use of news releases, media advisories, press conference, relationships with journalists, etc.
Show drowning prevention video?
Foundational to social marketing work, these plans become central to the work of internal staff, frequently acting as the basis for their program or coalition work. Successful examples of this strategy abound, for instance, the Communications team working in tandem with health district Healthy Communities staff to fuel and maintain the efforts of Spokane County’s Food Access Coalition. The county’s Health Equity Workgroup, Birth Outcomes Taskforce, Drowning Prevention Coalition, Immunization Action Coalition, Region 9 Health Care Coalition, and literally dozens more. Coalitions are a primary conduit to ensure the broad sharing of campaign and evaluation findings to the public, partners and community leaders, therefore, as a health district, there is great emphasis on ensuring the infrastructure is in place to support them.
Kim would like thumbnails of
Realfoodspokane.org
Drowning prevention PSA
Growing Healthy Together
Show commerical
Formative analysis also bolsters several health district mass communication campaigns and evaluation efforts resulting in community change. Its Growing Health Together campaign is an award-winning multi-year initiative focused on increasing WIC client enrollment and retention rates, which directly results in better nutrition in Spokane’s low-income families. In the first month of the campaign, WIC saw 246 more participating clients over the previous year. The next month they added an impressive 455 new clients to their caseload. They also shored up their enrollment with 559 more existing clients utilizing food vouchers. The campaign’s web site, spokanewic.org, experienced 13,800 visits in its first two months and nearly half of those visitors utilized the new online enrollment feature, which was a needed feature directly identified through the social marketing process.
SRHD Healthy Communities and Communications staff also launched its Stickman Knows campaign, Spokane County’s first comprehensive bicyclist, pedestrian and motorist safety campaign. The campaign process led to several successful mass media strategies including television commercials, billboard and bus advertising, print advertising, promotional items and a very popular Stickman Knows mascot that is present at numerous community events, in neighborhoods, and in schools. In an Omnibus survey conducted one year after campaign launch, among a representative sample of adults, one-quarter (26 percent) said they could recall elements of the Stickman Knows campaign. In the communications industry, 12 months into a campaign, an organization would typically strive simply to be in the double digits in terms of awareness. Several other campaign success stories also exist including the district’s Bring It, Summer Pests campaign, its Let’s Cook Whole Foods campaign, Drowning is Preventable campaign, Back-to-School Immunization campaign, Before Flu Gets You campaign, and many, many more.
In terms of how media is utilized to disseminate the campaign messages, policies and procedures again exist to help funnel workflow to SRHD’s designated communications experts and account for consistency and clarity in messaging. Sharing lessons learned and impact is proven time-and-again to be a winning strategy for helping the public, partners and stakeholders understand program benefits. Often, Communications staff will meet one-on-one with clients to develop key informant profiles for use with media, legislators and the public to personalize winning public health strategies. These interviews often result in many different products to be utilized down the road including video, sound bites, photography, etc. Media often also participate in pre-arranged ridealongs as program staff work to accomplish their work in the community throughout the day. It is often helpful that staff communicate these successes back to funders as well, which Communications also developed a template and process for. To give a picture of average media and public interaction between Communications and members of the press and community, here are some numbers:
WIC Farmers’ Market
Bring It Summer Pests!
One of our most comprehensive, most successful campaigns to-date….
Highlight Omnibus results that speak to brand loyalty
Overall, 65% judged the performance of the Spokane Regional Health District as either "excellent" or "good." As the
chart shows, members of different background groups provided average appraisals of SRHD performance that hardly
deviated from the overall one. Outcomes did not vary significantly by gender, age, parental status, educational status,
income level, location, or voter status.*
Highlight Omnibus results that speak to brand loyalty
Overall, 65% judged the performance of the Spokane Regional Health District as either "excellent" or "good." As the
chart shows, members of different background groups provided average appraisals of SRHD performance that hardly
deviated from the overall one. Outcomes did not vary significantly by gender, age, parental status, educational status,
income level, location, or voter status.*
Process
Use of our logo and how it interacts with program logos
Colors, fonts
Web, html
Branding guidelines
Colors, fonts – encourage employees to use it
Web, html
Embarking on a new web site.
Highly recommend hiring a professional firm to not only create the site but walk you through the process.