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Volume 2: No. 2, April 2005
TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
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During the 2001 Physical Activity and Public Health (PAPH) course, the rural estuarial town of Bluffton, SC, hosted a team project. The town was preparing to undergo rapid development, and the team saw an opportunity to expand the park system in a manner that could produce a continuous greenway from the historic downtown to the newly developing areas, thus encouraging foot and bicycle traffic as a means of transportation. The team's recommendations to the town included purchasing a privately held parcel of land that was home to an historic oyster-shucking factory. The team presented its recommendations to the community at a well-attended meeting in the local town hall. At that meeting, community groups interested in bicycle and walking trails interacted for the first time with the mayor and other town officials who made a public commitment to hold subsequent joint meetings. These meetings resulted in the formation of the Greater Bluffton Pathways Coalition, which soon became an active group with 150 members. Primed to purchase the land, the town diligently pursued public funds available from the Beaufort County Open Land Trust. When the land became available for sale, the municipal leaders were ready to secure its purchase. Furthermore, the town was able to arrange for the historic oyster factory to remain in operation on the public land as an historical institution. Bluffton has come to trust the PAPH students as a valuable resource, providing knowledge and an objective perspective, and it continues to serve as an eager host community for the team exercises. The effort of Bluffton residents to increase green space and safe venues for physical activity and to maintain the historic character of their town continues along with the development process. |
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Local and state health departments and community organizations regularly enter into partnerships with the course organizers to provide opportunities for students to practice what they have learned in the classroom. These partners provide students with important information and insights into the features of the communities that serve as the settings for field projects. Results and recommendations from the field projects are in turn provided to community partners for potential implementation. Community members report having taken several actions on the basis of these recommendations, leading to environmental policy changes in the community (Sidebar).
To date, the course has been evaluated through participants’ anonymous responses to a written questionnaire at the close of the course, as well as through exit interviews. Feedback from these efforts has led to a continuous process of course improvement.
The most recent postcourse evaluation results available (2003) showed a very high level of satisfaction among course participants and unanimous agreement that the course will influence their future professional activities. In open-ended questioning, respondents mentioned the opportunities for interaction with faculty and for networking with other participants as especially useful.
Longer-term evaluation based on how participants have subsequently used the training is currently under way. Meanwhile, follow-up surveys conducted by telephone and by mail to elicit feedback from participants in the first four years of the course (1996–1999) have yielded important information. Of the 63 respondents to the mailed survey, 65% reported an increase in their involvement in physical activity interventions after the course. Nearly all respondents (97%) said that they had applied information from the course in their daily work, 74% said that they had changed the way they plan and implement physical activity programs, and 75% said that they had increased their leadership role in physical activity promotion.
The success of this training program is perhaps best exemplified by its use as a model for developing other training programs such as the Nutrition and Public Health course sponsored by the CDC’s Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity. The WHO Collaborating Center sponsored a similar course in Brazil last year in which 57 professionals were trained by an expert faculty from Brazil and around the world. Another course is planned for Colombia in 2005. In addition, WHO regularly sends participants to the United States course in hopes of improving their competencies and spawning interest around the world for physical activity promotion. Information about the course and application materials are available from www.prevention.sph.sc.edu/seapines/index.htm*.
Social marketing involves the use of marketing principles in designing and implementing programs to promote socially beneficial behavior change (7-9). At its most basic level, it is a set of methods to increase understanding of a target audience so that practitioners can develop interventions most likely to resonate well with, and elicit the desired behavior change in, the intended audience. Its use as a tool in public health has been growing, although many in the field have incomplete understanding of its techniques, its proper use, or its potential benefits. To help public health professionals to acquire the knowledge, skill, motivation, and experience necessary to use social marketing effectively, the Florida Prevention Research Center (FPRC) at the University of South Florida offers several types of training courses to public health professionals working at the federal, state, and local levels.
To make both introductory training and continuing education in social marketing available, the FPRC offers the annual Social Marketing and Public Health Conference, Social Marketing in Public Health Field School courses, a Social Marketing in Public Health graduate certificate, and a variety of shorter training workshops tailored to meet the needs of a wide variety of public health practitioners.
The Social Marketing in Public Health Conference, which was initiated in 1991, has since attracted more than 3500 public health and social marketing practitioners from 50 states and 14 countries. The main conference is designed for professionals with some expertise in social marketing. To complement plenary sessions on current issues in the field, concurrent sessions feature case studies and analyses of emerging theoretical and methodological issues. The conference culminates in an array of half-day workshops on topics such as health message design principles and practice, formative research methods, low-cost materials development, pretesting techniques, and evaluation methods. The faculty consists of experts in social marketing from around the world (available from www.cme.hsc.usf.edu*.)
Just prior to the main conference, a two-day introductory training session is held to teach participants the basics of social marketing, including its conceptual framework, audience segmentation techniques, the use of formative research to develop a marketing plan, the development and pretesting of marketing materials and tactics, and the principles of program monitoring and evaluation. Participants work in teams, applying marketing concepts to specific public health problems. More than half of the participants in the introductory training session stay for the main conference as well.
The Social Marketing in Public Health Field Schools offer graduate-level courses taught by experts in social marketing, commercial marketing, and public health (available from www.cme.hsc.usf.edu*). These courses are offered in an intensive five-day format. One course is offered just prior to, and one just after, the main conference in June to accommodate busy professionals who prefer a concentrated travel schedule. Another five-day course is offered in January. Two to four Field School courses have been offered each year, with enrollments varying from 28 to 110 (in 2004). Each of these five-day courses may be taken for three graduate credits by students enrolled in masters’ degree programs or in the social marketing graduate certificate program (see below). Courses address strategic planning, formative research methods, media expertise, special communications skills (e.g., for low literacy and cross-cultural populations), and consumer behavior theory. Pretest–posttest evaluations of these training courses have consistently demonstrated a significant increase in participants’ understanding of social marketing concepts and confidence in their ability to apply social marketing techniques.
To meet the growing need for advanced training and credentialing in social marketing and public health, the FPRC faculty has developed an 18-credit–hour graduate certificate program (available from www.outreach.usf.edu/gradcerts/certificates.asp*) designed for experienced masters-prepared public health professionals. (Three have graduated to date.) The only such program for public health practitioners in the United States, the graduate certificate program requires students to complete six courses.
Each year, FPRC faculty members also provide intensive, multiday social marketing training workshops tailored to meet the needs of practitioners working in state and local public health departments. Since 2001, the FPRC has offered training in social marketing and community-based prevention marketing to state health departments in Alaska, Arkansas, California, Florida, Colorado, Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas, and Missouri, as well as to numerous local health departments around the country. (Recent training workshops are available from http://publichealth.usf.edu/prc/training_ matrix.pdf*.)
Other social marketing resources relevant to public health practitioners are available from http://publichealth.usf.edu/prc/training.html* and from http://turningpointprogram.org?Pages/socialmakt.html*.
A well-trained public health workforce is essential if public health research is to have a tangible impact on populations. The three PRC-generated training courses highlighted here illustrate the commitment of the PRC program to improving public health, not only through innovative research with communities, but through direct training of public health practitioners (more offerings are available from www.cdc.gov/prc/training/index.htm).
The EBPH and PAPH courses build on the successful application of evidence-based approaches in clinical disciplines (10,11), the increased availability of online data, and outstanding new systematic reviews such as the Guide to Community Preventive Services (12,13) (available from www.thecommunityguide.org*) that seek to improve the use of scientific information in public health practice settings. Social marketing training offers techniques to help public health practitioners to better understand their target audiences so that public health efforts to change behavior have the best chance of success. These three training courses developed and offered by PRCs constitute a meaningful contribution to the ongoing training of public health practitioners and, by creating a better trained workforce, enhance the likelihood that public health interventions are selected for implementation on the basis of scientific evidence of effectiveness and that the interventions selected are ultimately successful.
Evidence-Based Public Health: This program was funded through CDC contract U48/CCU710806 (Prevention Research Centers Program), the Chronic Disease Directors, and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. We appreciate support from our course advisors, in particular Garland Land, Chris Maylahn, Deborah Porterfield, Paul Siegel, and Eduardo Simoes. We are also grateful to our collaborators: Don Bishop, Claudia Campbell, Lucimar Coser Cannon, Gunter Diem, Kathy Douglas, Vilius Grabauskas, Jim Gurney, Debra Haire-Joshu, Aulikki Nissinen, Aushra Shatchkute, Bill True, and Mike Waller; and to our research assistants: Laura Caisley, Carolyn Harris, Lori Hattan, and Leslie McIntosh.
Physical Activity and Public Health Practitioners Course on Community Interventions: This program was funded through the CDC contract U48/CCU409664 (Prevention Research Centers Program). We express our deepest appreciation to all of the course coordinators and faculty and the many staff from the CDC, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, and the Utah Department of Health who have over the years devoted their valuable time and effort to the course. We also thank Janna Borden, Sonja Snowdon, and the several graduate students who have contributed countless hours of exceptional administrative support.
Social Marketing: We thank the CDC for providing stipends for state and local health department professionals to attend the annual Social Marketing and Public Health Conference. We also wish to thank our Field School instructors: Rob Donovan, Gerard Hastings, Richard Krueger, Nancy Lee, Claudia Parvanta, Bonnie Salazar, Paul Solomon, and Charles Weinberg.
Corresponding Author: Adele L. Franks, MD, 388 Middle St, Amherst, MA 01002. Telephone: 413-587-0025. E-mail: afranks@cdc.gov.
Author Affiliations: Ross C. Brownson, PhD, Elizabeth A. Baker, PhD, MPH, Terry L. Leet, PhD, Margret A. O’Neall, PhD, Prevention Research Center, Saint Louis University School of Public Health, St Louis, Mo; Carol Bryant, PhD, Kelli McCormack Brown, PhD, Prevention Research Center, University of South Florida, Tampa, Fla; Steven P. Hooker, PhD, Delores M. Pluto, PhD, Prevention Research Center, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC; Dennis M. Shepard, MAT, Prevention Research Center, University of South Carolina, Leesburg, SC; Russell R. Pate, PhD, Department of Exercise Science, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC; Kathleen N. Gillespie, PhD, Department of Health Management and Policy, Saint Louis University School of Public Health, St Louis, Mo; Eduardo J. Simoes, MD, MPH, Prevention Research Centers Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Ga.
*URLs for nonfederal organizations are provided solely as a service to our users. URLs do not constitute an endorsement of any organization by CDC or the federal government, and none should be inferred. CDC is not responsible for the content of Web pages found at these URLs.
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The opinions expressed by authors contributing to this journal do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Public Health Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the authors’ affiliated institutions. Use of trade names is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by any of the groups named above.
Privacy Policy | Accessibility This page last reviewed March 30, 2012
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