Press Play to Begin: Animating Health Equity Concepts

Background: Health equity exists when everyone has the opportunity to be as healthy as possible. Population-level factors, such as the physical, built, social, and policy environments, can have a greater impact on health outcomes than individual-level factors. The root causes of health inequity can be directly linked to a failure to address these population-level factors. Members of the public may be unaware of the impact population-level factors have on health, and public health professionals often find it challenging to explain health equity and the social determinants of health and to provide examples of how equity can be achieved. Simple and effective communication about these concepts is important to the overall goal of achieving health equity.

Program background: CDC’s Office of Health Equity (OHE) advances health equity through clear, consistent language about health equity grounded in three evidence-based principles for effective communication about health equity: meet the audience where they are; communicate health equity as a “we” issue; and frame health equity as achievable. To further advance communication about health equity and increase communication resources that align with these principles, OHE developed five brief (less than five minutes each) videos. The video topics are: series overview, health equity, social determinants of health, racism and health, and intersectionality. These videos were intentionally designed to frame health equity as a “we” issue with the stories within the videos centered on communities and members of those communities.

Evaluation Methods and Results: OHE’s Communications Unit worked with subject matter experts and a contractor with expertise in creating videos to develop scripts, storyboards, and animations for five videos focused on health equity and related concepts. The videos were posted on OHE’s website and CDC’s YouTube account and promoted via OHE’s Twitter and LinkedIn accounts and OHE’s Health Equity Matters e-newsletter. Within the first two months after initial launch of the videos – and without paid promotion, the individual videos garnered between 1K and 4.4K views on YouTube; the “Health Equity” (3.3K) and “Social Determinants of Health” (4.4K) videos have had the highest views. The videos garnered over 40,000 impressions, 130 likes, and over 200 reposts via OHE’s Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. We will continue to monitor engagement and promote the videos through proactive partner engagement and strategic paid promotion to coincide with OHE initiatives and activities.

Conclusions: Although research in health equity continues to grow, challenges remain in integrating health equity into public health practice. This video series provides a more complete picture of what health equity is and why it’s important for lay audiences while also offering specific examples and messaging useful for public health practitioners and decision-makers as they seek to explain the importance of health equity.

Implications for research and/or practice: OHE created engaging videos that explain the complex concepts of health equity that may be used by public health practitioners and lay audiences to improve awareness and understanding of health equity. The videos incorporate OHE’s evidence-based principles for health equity communication, are 508 compliant, and use plain language and consistent definitions, making them accessible to a broad audience.