Step 5: Design your campaign strategy

Choose key behaviors

Choose key behavior(s) for your audience using the Social Ecological Model

Use the Social Ecological Model and your persona to help you choose behaviors that are relevant to your audience. Below are some example behaviors and actions at the individual, relationship, community, and societal levels.

Example individual behaviors:

• Strengthen your support system by connecting with others – Social connectedness is a critical protective factor.
• Seek support/care – Reach out for assistance when facing challenges or struggling with depressive thoughts. This may include:
  • Talking to a loved one or trusted adult
  • Contacting 988
  • Speaking with a mental health professional, spiritual leader, or alternative healer
• Create a safety plan – Work with a professional to create a safety plan. It can include a variety of situations ranging from everyday encounters to possible life-threatening emergencies. The Stanley Brown Safety Plan and SAMHSA Safety Plan are great resources.
• Secure lethal means – Responsible storage and/or disposal of firearms and other weapons, prescription medications, illicit drugs, or poisonous substances can prevent impulsive access and reduce the risk of accidents or misuse. These resources can help with this messaging:
  • Suicide Prevention is Everyone's Business: A Toolkit for Safe Firearm Storage: Created by the VA and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
  • Lethal Means Safety Suite of Tools: The Department of Defense Suicide Prevention Office provides a library of safe storage-related toolkits, public service announcements, and other resources.

Example relationship behaviors:

• Talk directly to your loved one – Reach out and talk with a friend or family member if you think they may be struggling with thoughts of suicide. Talking about suicide doesn't cause suicide. Check out these resources to get you started: #BeThe1To; "Talk Away the Dark." You can contact 988 for support if you need help with how to talk to a loved one about suicide.
• Shift perspectives – Build trust with your friend or family member who feels shame around acknowledging their suicidal ideation.
  • This example may give you ideas: Man Therapy® | Men's Mental Health Resources
• Learn the warning signs – Give friends and family information about suicide warning signs and how to respond such as contacting 988. Encourage them to look out for their loved ones.

Example community actions that can support behavior change:

• Improve suicide care and mental health services –Implement suicide risk screenings. Be intentional about checking on community members' mental health. Create a process or calendar to prompt a reminder. This can occur in places like medical offices or schools and include routine questions for patients.
• Train schoolteachers and administrators to teach coping and problem-solving skills. Encourage staff to participate in a training likeApplied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) or a youth safety planning training.
• Create protective environments and opportunities for social connection. Build in opportunities for people to connect and create a sense of community. This could involve places of worship, community organizations, city planners, or hobby groups. It can also mean creating healthy organizational policies and culture in work environments.

Read more about community level actions in CDC's Suicide Prevention Vital Signs and Resource for Action.

Example societal level actions that can support behavior change:

• Improve financial security. Raise awareness about state unemployment benefits and provide directions on how to apply. You might partner with an organization that can host an "open house" style event to help people complete the paperwork and share information about suicide prevention resources.
• Increase access to free or low-cost food. Raise awareness about the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). You could partner with local organizations that are already assisting low-income families or families experiencing financial hardship to improve awareness of this benefit and share information about suicide prevention resources.

Behavior Change Model

Use a behavior change model to design your campaign strategy

Now that you've identified the behavior you want to change, your campaign needs one clear call to action for your audience. This is a concise and direct instruction encouraging a specific and immediate help-seeking action. Refer to Appendix I: Understanding what drives behavior change and complete Exercise 6 in the Brainstorm Book to familiarize you with behavior change models that will help you develop an effective call to action. There may be several calls to action that could address your problem statement. However, building a campaign around one call to action makes behavior change more feasible. Consider building additional campaign phases to address other desired actions.

Your call to action and the behavior you want to influence will depend on the campaign beneficiary. The call to action needs to grab the campaign audience's attention and be easy to remember. It may encourage a new behavior or prompt an existing behavior.

Effective calls to action use action verbs and plain language and stand out within campaign materials. Some examples for Level 1 and Level 2:

• Store all firearms securely when not in use.
• Call us if you're struggling, we have counselors to help you. (See Jeff's Transtheoretical Model of Change)
• Call or text 988 any time – no judgement, just help. (See Jeff's Social Cognitive Theory)
• Ask your loved ones to talk. Try saying: "Can you give me a call? I'm feeling lonely right now."
• Don't be afraid to talk to your friend if it seems like they've been down lately. You don't have to be perfect, just be there. (See Dannika's Health Belief Model)
• Tell your loved one you care and let them know they can call or text 988 if they need support.

Call to action

Brainstorming your campaign's call to action

Exercise 7 in the Brainstorm Book helps you brainstorm behaviors or actions that your audience might reasonably be able to do. Keep in mind your organization's mission as you're completing this exercise. Focus on areas you and your campaign audience can influence.

Invite members of your audience to help you develop the call to action. They will have insights on feasibility and if it resonates with the way they talk about suicide prevention. This type of audience research can:

• Validate that your campaign's call to action messaging will resonate with other members of the audience
• Tailor the call to the audience
• Demonstrate cultural humility
• Comply with messaging best practices (See Step 6: Craft an Effective Message)

Evaluation

Begin planning for evaluation

The integration of evaluation practices into the design and implementation of a campaign strategy is critical to the campaign's effectiveness. Evaluation planning should occur concurrently to the development of your campaign strategy.

Evaluation is the systematic method for collecting, analyzing, and using data to examine the effectiveness and efficiency of programs and to contribute to continuous program improvement. Building campaign evaluation into the design and implementation of your campaign will help you be intentional about:

• Maximizing your reach
• Driving impact within your campaign audience
• Promoting measurable behavior change
• Identifying elements that work and those that need improvement
• Improving your campaign/program
• Providing evidence/merit of your activities and approaches

It's important to evaluate the effectiveness of your campaign and its messages. This can happen during development, rollout, and post-implementation. You may have to prioritize which data are most important with limited resources, but don't skip evaluation all together.

Evaluation can equip you with a data-driven approach for communication, help assess that activities are happening as planned, and be used to determine the effectiveness of your campaign. It can also be used to help you understand why it may or may not be working as intended. Evaluations generate data to improve your campaign and inform future campaigns. Your evaluation methods and findings should connect directly back to your campaign's objectives, audiences, and call to action.

Develop your evaluation approach

Prepare for evaluation before you begin to develop your campaign. Gathering input from your audience can help you design and implement your evaluation.

A logic model can help you identify critical components of your campaign's strategy. It visualizes the sequence of actions that you intend to take and how those are expected to achieve specific outcomes. The visual captures the logical relationships between the resources, activities, outputs, and desired outcomes. This will help you and others understand how you expect your campaign to work and can be useful to determine how to evaluate it. It can also shape campaign iterations or strategy revisions. See CDC's logic model guidance.

Your logic model is the perfect place to capture how intended outcomes are expected to lead to the campaign goals and objectives. A logic model can ensure you have activities that support the strategies you chose from the Social Ecological Model. Most logic models contain:

• Inputs – Resources, such as funding, staff, materials, and time, that go into the campaign development and implementation.
• Activities – Specific actions, processes, or interventions you plan to accomplish with the inputs. These are the specific steps that help you implement the campaign.
• Outputs – Direct products or services that result from the campaign. These are often quantifiable and tangible, such as the number of promotional activities conducted.
• Outcomes – The changes or benefits that result from your campaign, such as the number of calls to a hotline or the before and after feedback from an education session you hosted. Most logic models include short-term, intermediate, and/or long-term outcomes.

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An evaluation design checklist is another tool you can use. It can be useful for developing evaluation methods and planning. The Evaluation Design Checklist or RAND Checklist can help you identify potential steps and resources needed throughout your campaign. You can use these tools while you design your campaign. You can also use post-campaign implementation to evaluate how your implementation may have varied from your design and why.

Use Exercise 8 in the Brainstorm Book to complete an evaluation checklist or build a logic model.