Tackling Health Equity through Media

Background:

The Florida Department of Health’s Tobacco Free Florida program has spent more than 10 years educating Florida residents about the dangers of tobacco. While Florida's adult smoking rate has been reduced to 15.5%, there are still many communities disproportionately affected by tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke. As the smoking rates decline, tobacco control groups must address these at-risk populations.

Data show there are large populations of Floridians, including many children, for whom tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke are daily facts of life. These groups are disproportionately impacted by the health burden of tobacco use. The contrast is especially high among certain subpopulations, including racial and ethnic minorities, low-income individuals, the LGBTQ+ community and those with mental health conditions.

Program background:

Tobacco Free Florida launched a completely new statewide campaign in April 2018 to raise awareness about the health disparities of tobacco use, who carries the health burden and the steps to take to address and achieve health equity in Florida.

The campaign contained multiple elements, including new TV ads, earned media efforts and social media promotion. The campaign consisted of media materials development – including press releases, fact sheets and op-eds, statewide media outreach, spokesperson preparation and facilitating onsite interviews, a robust social media strategy and much more.

The program launched "The Reasons", the new TV campaign, to raise awareness of the free quit tools available throughout the state. The ads featured the forgotten working class people that are often not seen in TV ads. The ads share the stories of six current smokers in communities where the health burdens of tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure are especially high. The individuals express some of their many reasons to end their smoking addiction, resulting in personal, relatable and emotional stories to inspire others to quit smoking. The media team determined that Tobacco Free Florida Week 2018 was an opportune time to launch these ads and promote them in our earned and social media efforts.

Participants in this session will be able to create custom content using detailed insights and data that were successful for Tobacco Free Florida's campaign. This includes research insights on the populations, insights for formative research, breakdown of creative assets, media pitching, media hits, sample coverage, social media tactics, collateral development and more.

Evaluation Methods and Results:

RTI tested the six TV advertisements in quantitative formative research. Each ad was perceived to be effective based on mean scores on the perceived effectiveness (PE) scale. The advertisements were also found to be motivating.

The media outreach campaign resulted in:

• 5.4 million earned media impressions.
• Coverage in 54 unique outlets across TV, print, radio and online publications.
• In addition, the outreach campaign secured coverage from five National Public Radio stations across five Designated Marketing Areas (DMA’s) in Florida, with a total audience of 188,900.

Conclusions: A well-crafted media outreach campaign can be implemented at a relatively low cost.

Implications for research and/or practice: An effective campaign to address health equity issues can be implemented across several levels of investment by utilizing paid, earned and owned media properties.