It Takes a Village to Disseminate 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey Results and Messages about the Importance of Student Health

Background:

Addressing HIV, STD and pregnancy risk among youth is an important public health issue. Partnerships and news media can serve as a conduit for education and outreach to multiple audiences. CDC uses an integrated approach of both traditional news media (print, and broadcast) and social media (Twitter, Facebook) to increase coverage and disseminate national survey results and evidence-based, youth HIV, STD and pregnancy prevention information.

Program background:

CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) has provided important data about student health behaviors since 1991. These behaviors vary over time and across the nation, making the YRBS an essential tool to better understand youth health risk behaviors and experiences at the national, state, and local levels. Results from the 2017 YRBS and a trend analysis report showed promising and concerning news about the health status of high school students. To broaden the reach of report findings, CDC’s dissemination approach was designed around two main strategies: media relations and partner engagement. These strategies overlapped and enhanced media coverage and dissemination opportunities.

Evaluation Methods and Results:

To support the YRBS June 2018 release, traditional and social media activities were planned and multi-media products were developed based on targeted outreach tactics reflective of audience needs. During June - July, multiple dissemination opportunities included engaging audiences via social media by releasing a YouTube video, posting content on Twitter/Facebook, sending Gov Delivery email updates, and launching new web content. Partner engagement was conducted via briefings, social media (primarily Twitter), and email announcements. To reach news reporters and encourage coverage of the YRBS results, CDC implemented a news media strategy for the data release that included creating key messages, developing a digital press kit, and training spokespersons for interviews. These collective activities resulted in a growing number of news and social media placements/impressions, including:

• News Media Coverage: 197 unique media stories and 952,330,809 total media impressions
• Web: 67,000 cumulative page views
• Social media for @CDC_DASH: 74,000 impressions and 1,300 engagements
• CDC/DASH Impressions: 265K social media impressions, cumulative web page views, e-blast recipients
• Overall reach (#CDCYRBS/#YRBS): 10.5M impressions, 211 unique users, 390 mentions
• 54 partner social media posts: 700 engagements (Twitter/Facebook)

These evaluation results were calculated from media reports, web analytics, online searches, and internal assessments. Results indicate an increase over the 2015 YRBS release metrics.

Conclusions:

Diffusion is the natural spread of information, however, dissemination is the conscious effort to spread new information to target audiences. Outreach using partnerships and media relations strategies provide a valuable opportunity to disseminate credible information and resources in readily presentable formats to various outlets, which can increase coverage. Using CDC messages and resources allowed partners and reporters to develop accurate, relevant, and compelling stories that featured the latest research, thereby increasing access to information for target audiences.

Implications for research and/or practice:

The ways that audiences obtain information constantly evolve. As a result, oral communication, traditional news media and social media have a role to play reaching audiences. We should be adaptive in our dissemination channels and approaches to maximize outreach to audiences and produce credible, ready-to-use content for information dissemination channels and outlets.