Read on Twitter
Doing a project on public health campaigns in the era of COVID and learning about what has and has NOT worked. here are some gems.
First up: check out this WILD ad trying to deter men from dating teen girls. It was posted in public restrooms. Wild guess: I doubt it worked.
First up: check out this WILD ad trying to deter men from dating teen girls. It was posted in public restrooms. Wild guess: I doubt it worked.
another doozy. public health campaigns have often tried to use shame, but it does not work in changin behavior. and this one, which tried to prevent teen pregnancy, also succeeds at being hella racist.
getting attention is a big goal of many public health campaigns, but it doesn't always mean it's going to result in behavioral change. visceral, gross images can impact some people but for others it's too far away to internalize.
health ads do well when they evoke an emotion or humor. but to be effective, it has to include education and an action statement too, and it has to feel personally applicable. telling kids about long-term consequences is often extra hard because they can't grasp it.
successful public health campaigns know their audience and find them where they already are. know who you are trying to reach, what messages are meaningful to them and where they already congregate.
shocking messages might get attention but if they increase stigma, they may be counterproductive because the most impacted people will find it harder to reach out for help. make sure folks see a life line and not a judgement.
the most effective messages use a form of peer pressure and reinforce the idea that "people like me do this thing." this is far more impactful than knowledge, fear of consequences, or even direct promises of payment for compliance.
we also know that abstinence-only messages are less effective than ones that come from a place of harm reduction. meet people where they are, understand why they aren't already doing the thing you want and try to move them along a continuum to safer behaviors.
an effective public health message has emotion, education and an action step. we need some form of evaluation to assess if the campaign did more than just get attention.
so if we want COVID-era messages to be informed by past public health campaigns, let's consider:
who we are trying to reach
why are they not currently doing the thing?
get their attention/appeal to emotion
give them something specific to do
who we are trying to reach
why are they not currently doing the thing?
get their attention/appeal to emotion
give them something specific to do
we have to normalize three different, normally unrelated behaviors: hand washing, wearing masks, and maintaining physical distancing in order to effectively combat COVID
this may mean a variety of messages in a variety of places. some will be purely how-to and informative, to reach the parts of the public who are unclear on how to effectively handwash, or how distancing or masks work
for those who are politically disinclined/conditioned against concern about COVID, we can still appeal to other values like: regard for hygiene, getting along in a community or protecting the vulnerable.
we may not have consistent leadership on COVID, but don't despair: the biggest impacts often come from our communities. each one of us can normalize healthier behaviors. that often has a much bigger effect than a flyer campaign.
