Using Online Bulletin Boards to Develop a Campaign to Improve Healthcare Worker Mental Health

Background: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is developing a social marketing campaign to improve healthcare worker wellbeing. To inform campaign development, NIOSH conducted formative research via online bulletin boards (OBBs) with intended audiences: healthcare workers and hospital leaders.

Program background: NIOSH used OBBs to (1) identify effective campaign messages, (2) glean feedback on various creative approaches, and (3) understand how and where to effectively reach key audiences.

NIOSH considered other methods of qualitative research (i.e., focus groups and in-depth interviews) to address key research objectives but selected OBBs due to the ability to:

• Discuss sensitive topics in an asynchronous, anonymous manner (i.e., moderator and participants cannot see or hear each other, rather they can only read text responses);
• Reach busy audiences at a time and platform preferable for them (i.e., mobile phone or computer, without a need for video capabilities); and
• Expedite the recruitment, moderation, data collection, and analysis process.

This poster will demonstrate the advantages of using OBBs compared to other market research methods, describe the process for conducting OBBs, and explain how OBB insights can be used to inform the development of a campaign similar to NIOSH’s healthcare worker initiative.

Evaluation Methods and Results: OBBs were conducted over two days with a total of 68 hospital leaders and healthcare workers. Participants spent approximately 90 minutes responding to questions, interacting with each other, and replying to additional probes posed by a moderator who followed along with the OBBs in real-time.

In a matter of days, NIOSH learned both audiences agreed that a top-down approach – where leaders take action at the organizational level – is needed to improve staff wellbeing, and both wanted local, hospital-specific solutions. Leaders need actionable guidance on how to implement proven solutions at their organization, and healthcare workers want support and resources to come from their own hospital. Both audiences expressed a desire for campaign messaging and imagery to be unifying, hopeful, and positive in tone.

Conclusions: NIOSH used OBB findings to revise messages, creative concepts, and communication strategies to support campaign development. Even more critically, the results signaled a need to pivot the overall campaign strategy. The OBB efforts were vital in quickly learning that healthcare workers would not benefit from a national campaign. Instead, NIOSH should focus on providing hospital leaders with actionable guidance to revise organizational policies to better support the wellbeing of healthcare workers at a local level.

Implications for research and/or practice: The asynchronous OBB methodology allowed NIOSH to collect quick, cost-effective insights for campaign development while minimizing participant burden. Participants were able to share input whenever worked best for them, even at odd hours, and during multiple sittings. Additionally, OBBs reduced barriers to participation, as people may have felt more comfortable discussing sensitive topics with the relatively high anonymity of OBBs compared to traditional focus groups. These results exemplify how OBBs can be used to conduct timely research with other busy or hard-to-reach audiences.