Last Lecture

Wow...I can't believe it's December already! This semester has flown by!

I enjoyed the little lesson that we learned in class today: "The answer is money. Now what is your question?" Isn't that the truth?!?!

We played a "game" which involved a strategy for an program evaluation presentation. I kept reflecting back on all the meetings I've sat in on where PIs have presented their progress to a funding agency. In all of these meetings, the PI has requested more money and an extension on the project-- whether they had great results to report or not. I'm thankful for their persistence. If they didn't ask for more money, I may not be employed! So, I don't think it's a negative thing to ask for money...as long as the PI is doing responsible research. But, as always, you have to keep the boss happy which means that your results are top priority.

On a final note...I'm really looking forward to all the polished projects next week...and, most importantly, the yummy food! I think it will be a very rewarding experience to present to our organization the culmination of all the hard work we've done over the semester...wish us luck!!!

The end of the semester is quickly approaching...

We presented our second mini-projects this week and a week from next Monday the whole project will be finished. Wow, we have a lot of work to do before then! I can't wait to see everyone's project come together at the final presentations in a couple weeks. The Shakti group still has some things to sort out...like how in the heck we can describe our organization in clear, concise terms...But, we'll do it and it will be great:)

I think the past few class topics have been particularly interesting, as we've discussed PR, Web 2.0, and Entertainment in regards to Public Health. It really proves that you have to "think outside the box" sometimes to truly see all the ways we can create exciting health promotion messages. It's challenging now NOT to find health messages in media and entertainment. It seems like in every tv show, radio show, and movie, there is some form of health communication. That's a good thing for public health! I think the more challenging part is getting people to recognize these messages without having to be a public health professional...

Just the other day I was watching the movie Lorenzo's Oil...I first saw this movie as a freshman high school student in my Biology class. There is a LOT of medical information thrown around in this movie...but there's also a lot of public health messages. For example, from this movie you will be able to distinguish the difference between saturated fats and unsaturated fats and understand the health effects of each. This movie also addresses cigarette addictions and world hunger...all in one Hollywood film...wierd, huh.

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!

First of all, I'd like to say happy (late) Thanksgiving! Now, onto business...this week's class was all about entertainment and health promotion communication. The whole entertainment world is full of health communication if you just stop and really listen to it.

Think about all the movies, tv shows, and music you've listened to recently. Did you know that many of them have health messages in them? Take Christina Aquilera's "Beautiful" song and music video...there is a mass of health communcation here! Anorexia, bulimia, drugs, etc...they are all presented in her video. There are other, more subtle, ways that entertainment discusses health, too. For example, I saw the movie "How to Deal" with Mandy Moore last night. This movie discusses teen pregnancy, teen sexual health, reckless driving, teen mental health, alcohol issues with teens, etc.

Health communication and the entertainment world go hand in hand...in my opinion. I think that we could make a huge aspect on public health by creatively working with the entertainment industry to hone in on positive health communication.

I'm excited to see what will become of public health in the entertainment world.

Stepping into the technological future...

The topic of this week's class was Web 2.0 and it's role in public health. Unfortunately, I wasn't there. I spent this week at a conference in Houston discussing the human factor in military operations. Specific to this course, I was reminded of our lecture on presentations, especially those using powerpoint. I was shocked to see leaders in the field losing the impact of their presentations because their powerpoints were so poorly put together. Many of them were busy and hard to follow. Others had so much text and the font was too small that they were unable to read. It was surprising because some of the topics these presenters were discussing were some of the most interesting topics to me: the NASA astronaut human factor and how that impacts all space missions.

It just goes to show how important it is to use powerpoint as a "bullet-point" tool, and avoid putting too much information on a slide. The information should come from the presenter...not the powerpoint slide.

Image is Everything

(OK, so I know this picture doesn't really have anything to do with the topic...but it says PR, and the puppy is adorable, so the picture stays! haha)

In this week's class, we talked about Public Relations (P.R.). Now, I have to be honest; I've never really invested any time in thinking about P.R. or even trying to understand what it is. However, after listening to our guest speaker, (I think her name was Laura Welchar, but I'm not sure on the spelling), I realized that P.R. is really necessary if you want the public to know about your topic (product, company, etc).

At first, I didn't really understand what a P.R. professional actually does for a living. But, I think the Princeton Review http://www.princetonreview.com/cte/profiles/dayInLife.asp?careerID=171sums it up best when they say "A public relations specialist is an image shaper. Their job is to create positive publicity for their client and enhance their reputation." Now, the part of this idea that makes people in my class-- and even myself-- wary is the fear that truth and honesty about an company, etc get overshadowed by creative writing and presentation skills, coupled with some good schmoozing with reporters. Yeah, it's part of life. You never want to publicize your weaknesses.

That reminds me of the time I got a negative comment card when I was a hostess one summer at Ruby's. One of the customers said "Amanda didn't smile enough when she was taking my money." I was pretty surprised since my job was to greet customers and be nice...and I was good at it, according to my boss and all the people I worked with. But, apparently I wasn't smiley enough that day. Anyway, one of the servers read it and ripped it up. I was confused because part of my job was to turn in all comment cards to the manager. She told me, "We never keep the bad ones...only turn in good comment cards. You were going to turn that in? Are you crazy?" Well, I guess she was just demonstrating good P.R. skills there.

Thoughts from FIRESTORM 2007

I sit here thinking about the past week of craziness in San Diego, as firefighters continue to work tirelessly against the raging flames. I've never been more proud to be a San Diegan. The First Responders that came to the aid of our community are incredible. Sure, this week was filled with a lot of uncertainty for my family, but we are all safe and our homes are fine. That is something to be thankful for.Even the families who lost their homes say that they are thankful. They are thankful for their safety, for the prayers of others, for the assistance that the citizens of San Diego have given them. They lost their homes-- and much more-- but they still are still thankful. That's incredible.

It's during tragedies like this that I remember what's really important to me. On Tuesday, after I learned that I wasn't supposed to go into work or school, the first thing I thought was "Great. Let me go be with my family." So, my husband and I drove to North County-- left the less smokey air of downtown and went to possibly the most dense, ashy air that I saw all week...Just so I could be with my family. Were they threatened? Not really. Was I threatened? No...but it didn't matter. I still wanted to be with them during that time of worry and confusion.

I feel lucky to be so close to my family that I could just take a 45 minute drive to be with them. A lot of people aren't that lucky. But, during this Firestorm, the evacuees at Qualcomm, the Del Mar Fairgrounds, and numerous other evacuation centers, were so well taken care of that for some, it was as if the volunteers were their own family members.

In closing, I just want to say THANK YOU, one more time to the firefighters and first responders who sacrificed their lives for the people of San Diego. And, especially to all of those who were injured. You are true heroes.

The Big Deal: Message Formation

Message formation, according to our professor, is the fun part of the campaign. Fun or not...it's development will make or break your campaign. Today we discussed some tactics that campaign developers use to get the audience to pay attention to their messages. Which ones work for you?

FEAR: This tactic is used to scare people into changing their behavior and it usually works. Some famous campaigns using fear are the "This is your brain on drugs" campaign, the anti-smoking commercials featuring patients with throat cancer, emphysema, smoking through their tracheotomy, etc.

TESTIMONIALS: This tactic works for a lot of people because we are more willing to listen to a personal story then simple facts. Also, we usually let ourselves buy into something more, if we see that it has worked for other people, especially people that we can relate to. Think about all those weight loss commercials--Jenny Craig, Special K, Nutri System. They all use testimonials to grab our attention.

COMEDY: Comedy is another useful tactic. This tactic also works well to get a lot of people's attention. Think about the TRUTH campaign for anti-smoking behavior. Their tactic is sarcastic comedy, exposing how flagrant the tobacco companies lies were about the dangers of smoking. Another example comes from the new Kaiser Permanente commercials with the little boy who is recalling his "younger years" of making bad food and exercise choices. How can you ignore that message?!

There are tons of others tactics used to deliver a message...but these are, in my opinion, some of the most effective ways of getting people's attention who may otherwise ignore what you are trying to tell them to change about their behavior. High involvement individuals (those who already have a vested interest in changing their behavior) may not need fear, or comedy, or testimonials to grab their attention. But the low involvment individuals need cues or other means of getting their attention (aka "added value"), so the previosly explained tactics is an effective way of doing that.

Take a look at one of my favorite commercials in the blog directly below this one. Does it inspire you to take a preventive approach to life by eating well and exercising? For me, it does, but it's possible that this message works for me because I am highly involved in this topic to begin with.

THRIVE

Take a look at one of my favorite Kaiser Permanente commercials. I love these commercials because they are visually appealing but more importantly, they share a great message! You are always hearing about how medical professionals don't care about preventive health...well, I think Kaiser is trying to dispute that reputation here.

Happy Health Literacy Month!

I would like to start off Health Literacy Month by saying Thank You to everyone who has commented on my blog. Dr. Engleberg will be happy, too.

Now on to the issue: What is health literacy and why is it important? Let me start with a scenario. Have you ever had a doctor's visit where a doctor or nurse explained something to you and then they asked you if you understood everything. You told them you did...but then you ran home and jumped on the internet or called a friend to ask them to explain what the doctor told you? I sure have. This scenario happens numerous times a day. It could range from small things like what time to take medication to accidentally signing up for a hysterectomy.

Health literacy by definition is the degree to which individual's have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. It has been reported that 50% of the U.S. population does not have the literacy level to fully function in the current economy, let alone understand medical terminology that impacts their life. This is a huge issue!

In my opinion, there are two ways to combat this problem.
1. Medical professionals (and everyone relaying health information) needs to modify their language so that it is understandable to the majority of the population. The difference between telling someone their tumor is "not cancer" versus "benign" is a huge step in the right direction.

2. Health professionals need to make patients feel comfortable enough that they wouldn't feel inadequate or "dumb" if they ask a question or explain that they don't understand the inofrmation given to them.

There is a large movement in the U.S. that wants to combat this issue with "PLAN LANGUAGE." This means clear, concise, necessary health information that can be understood by the general population. You can find more information about the Plain Language movement at this website: http://www.plainlanguage.gov/populartopics/health_literacy/index.cfm


Just to recap the last few weeks of class...

I think the main take away message was the importance of knowing your target audience and being able to accurately segment them. This concept is possibly the most important idea for a health campaign because if you can't connect with who you are aiming your messages at, it doesn't really matter what you are saying.

Labels, Labels, Labels

This week we we introduced to a couple new audience segmentation tools. The first one is the Claritas Prizm system. This is used for determining geographics of a target population, but it's also fun to use to see who lives in your area. To find out what kinds of people live near you, click on the link, type in your zipcode, and see what comes up! http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=20

According to this website, my zipcode in Mission Valley is filled with a bunch of young adults right out of college with careers and no children....yeah, I'll agree to that.

Another segmentation tool is the VALS system. http://www.sric-bi.com/VALS/

This system puts people into different categories based on their answer to a short survey. Go ahead and take it. See what your label is. I was an Achiever/Innovator. I wasn't shocked by this label. The description of the Achiever said that this person puts family, religion, and career first. Yep, that's me.

These tools are good to use to assist in the segmentation of your target audience....in addition to being fun to just play with. As Dr. Engleberg said, for some reason Americans like to be labeled. I think this is a true statement but I'm not sure why this is. People are always trying to be "unique" while being "just like everyone else". Maybe that's why we like labels. We want to be part of a group identity, yet these labels also give us ideas about how to break from the mold. Regardless, I am an Achiever/Innovator...for today at least.

Lastly, I'm gonna give a little information about my group project. We are working with the organization, Shakti Rising. http://www.shaktirising.org/ From what I know so far, I think they are a fantastic organization that is full of women with servant's hearts who really want to make a difference in their lives, while helping others heal. Our task is to help them with their goal of finding dedicated volunteers to teach, help heal, and lead women to recovery from various traumatic experiences. Finding dedicated volunteers for this project will be quite a challenge, but I think my group and I are definately up to the challenge!

Who is your audience?

The topic of this week's class was audience segmentation. This involves separating out your audience based on demographics, geographics, sociographics, psychographics, etc. We demonstrated this idea by segmenting the individuals in our class based on the region of San Diego that we live in (geographics), gender (demographics), beliefs about nutrition and exercise (psychographics), etc. The main lesson that I learned from this "lab" was that for most health topics, segmenting an audience solely by geographics or demographics will not be the most efficient method for having a large impact. Before developing a campaign, we must also look at the beliefs and attitudes of a population. Although it's easier and often more cost effective to look solely at demographics and geographics, sociographics and psychographics cannot be ignored.

The creators of the O Water commercial below claim that they are targeting people who care about fitness and what they put in their bodies. I think that I could be considered someone who cares about fitness and what I put in my body, but this does nothing for me. It doesn't do enough for me to make me want to buy the product, let alone be interested in it. Take a look...

O-Water Commercial

And, How Does That Make You Feel??

This week, Moshe--our professor-- dared us to apply the idea of active listening to at least three people. Ok, it wasn't a dare, it was an assignment. When you are going to try really hard to be an active listener, you have a little tool box of questions: open-ended questions, clarifications, restatements, a lot of "how does that make you feel?" haha. I gotta tell you, this was a very eye-opening experience. I had no idea how much I talk!! After trying out this "active listening" idea, I realized that most of the people I talk to do just that. They are very active listeners and just let me spill my guts without seeming too inconvenienced by it. Here's an example: I tested this assignment out on my boss and he was very difficult. Every time I asked him a question, he would answer and then immediately turn the subject back to me. This game of ping pong happened for quite a while. I put all of my tools to work and STILL the conversation kept coming back to me and my life. I guess he's just a varsity active listener and I'm still on JV.

Moving on...I was really interested in the idea of Wrong Reason Health Promotion that was brought up in class this week. The name "Wrong Reason" is misleading. Wrong reason HP refers to giving our audience a reason for behaving a particular way, because that is what motivates them, not necessarily the reason that will ultimately have the medical or social consequence that public health professionals are working for.

I guarantee that we've all seen this, been manipulated by it, and used it in our own lives. Here's a personal example. When I was a teenager, my parents used to urge me to use sunscreen every time I stepped out on to the tennis court. Their reason for wanting me to use sunscreen was for the prevention of skin cancer-- the "Right Reason". But my reason for using sunscreen was to avoid getting a sunburn...and as a result, getting the skin cancer lecture from my dad, AGAIN. At 15, did I really care that there was a possibility that when I turn 45 I might get skin cancer? Not really. Thankfully, now I do, but I didn't then.

So, do I believe in Wrong Reason HP? You bet I do! Who cares if 5 year olds know the nutritional benefit of eating vegetables?! Moral of the story: If you aren't going to figure out what will motivates someone to change their behaior, before urging them to do it, your success rate will probably be very tiny.

Perfect Persuasion

Did you know that most of the time we are heuristic thinkers? Ok, well it will probably help if I explained what that means. Heuristic thinking is a method of processing in which we are only "skimming the surface" of a message. We aren't thinking carefully, or systematically, but rather paying enough attention to simply be aware of the situation. Unfortunately, I think I fall into this heuristic way of thinking more often than most people. I blame it on the fact that most of the time I am multi-tasking. I think most people are that way these days. We are a busy bunch and we don't have time to listen carefully to ever message thrown at us!

But, knowing this about people makes health promotion communication a little easier. We know that in order to get our message across, we need to have a lot of cues and a lot of effective attention-getters. Because most people use this way of thinking more often, these cues and attention-getters are of the utmost importance. And for the systematic thinkers in the audience, we need to add in a little more "substance" to our message.

Beer commercials often aim to persuade the heuristic thinkers by using attractive women as the attention-getters. We shouldn't pick on the beer companies, though. Almost every commercial is aimed at the heuristic thinker in some respect. Do you ever talk to your friends or coworkers about funny commercials you've seen, but can't remember what the commercial was for? That happens to me all the time. There's a commercial about text messaging between a mother and daughter where the daughter only responds in test-lingo. I thought that commercial was pretty funny and I quote it with my coworkers all the time, but I have no idea what cell phone company it was for. Does that mean that the company failed in their mission? I obviously was attracted to the commercial but in the end, I wasn't influenced to buy their product.

Make it Easy, Please!

I ran across this posting on MSN.com. It describes 8 foods that we should eat everyday to keep us healthy. Anytime I see easy ways to make healthy changes, I jump on it. That's why I named this blog, "1-2-3 Be Healthy". And, it's what most people need, I think. Who has time to flip their daily schedule upside-down, just to lose a few pounds? This is what I normally hear: "Give me a few easy things I can do each day to be more healthy." That's all most of us really have time for, anyway. So, my goal today is to pass on an easy way to get powerful immunity-boosting, cancer-fighting, weight-controlling, etc etc etc, foods into your daily routine. You can read the article at http://health.msn.com/dietfitness/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100169452&GT1=10412. But let me summarize it for you...

SPINACH

Why- Muscle and bone builder, Great for your heart, Aids in eyesight

How to get it in- mix fresh spinach in with your salads, add spinach to your pizza or scrambled eggs

YOGURT

Why- Cancer fighter, Bone builder, Boosts immunity

How to get it in- pack it in your lunch for a healthy snack, top with nuts and blueberries for breakfast, use plain yogurt for the base in your veggie dip

TOMATOES

Why- Cancer fighter, Boosts immunity, Great for your heart

How to get it in- ask for double tomato sauce on your pizza, pile on the ketchup, drink a low-sodium V8

CARROTS

Why- Cancer fighter, Aids in eyesight, Boosts immunity

How to get it in- snack on baby carrots, add carrots to your salad, slice extra thin and add to your sandwiches

BLUEBERRIES

Why- Cancer fighter, Stimulates the brain, Great for your heart, Boosts immunity

How to get it in- add fresh blueberries to your cereal or yogurt, blend in a smoothie or milkshake, spread blueberry jam on toast

BLACK BEANS

Why- Muscle builder, Stimulates the brain, Great for your heart

How to get it in- add to salads, tacos, burritos, and chili; puree with olive oil and garlic for a healthy dip

WALNUTS

Why- Muscle builder, Stimulates the brain, Cancer fighter, Great for your heart, Boosts immunity

How to get it in- sprinkle on salads, dice and add to pancake batter, mix with berries and add to yogurt, pack in your lunch to snack on during the work day

OATS

Why- Muscle builder, Great for your heart, Stimulates the brain

How to get it in- eat granola or oatmeal for breakfast, sprinkle in yogurt, add to homemade cookies

What does our future hold?

On our first day of class we went back in time, to the last 50 years of Health Communication as documented by the CDC. This film (although only about 10 minutes long) was an eye-opening experience for me. Not only did it open my eyes to how little I know about past health issues and methods of health communication, but it also made me stop and think about what topics would be documented in a film covering 2000-2050. Unfortunately, I don't think that many of the topics will change. Now, I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but most of the topics discussed in the CDC's film, are still of great concern to us today: healthy eating, STDs, child safety, breastfeeding...the list goes on. What does this mean? Well, I think we can learn two main lessons from this.

1. To some extent, humans will always struggle with some core health issues because these issues arise from human behavior.

2. It's going to take more than an advertisement on tv or a poster to make a difference. Instead, we have to change learn how to change social norms.

On a more positive note, I think we've done an excellent job changing the social norm of smoking. Many thanks to new laws, medical evidence, and the numerous campaigns urging people to change their views about smoking. Here's a link to one of my favorites: http://www.whudafxup.com/

And who could forget this woman?





















Despite all that we are up against, I think we have reason to believe that public health will continue to see monumental health behavior changes, greatly because of the creative ways in which we are learning to communicate health issues.