Key learnings

This class has been one of the most exciting courses I have taken in the graduate program so far. From the beginning you could take what we discussed in class and see it in the real world. I find myself paying more attention to advertising and the media. Especially, public health messages. I keep asking myself "did they do their formative research?" Coming from an anthropology background I completely understand and couldn't agree more with the reasons for doing formative research. This aspect along with the idea of being a cultural spy interested me the most. I also learned a lot from our discussion on 'hard to reach' audiences. I now feel ready to tell anyone who ever poses that phrase to me, "there are no hard to reach audiences!". I have learned so much that I can apply to my work in PH. I definitely plan on keeping my notes and reader handy. The project was challenging and required more creative thinking then I have had to do in any other class. But it was worth it because we were able to apply our knowledge into a real life project. Thanks Dr.Engelberg for sharing what you know.

Final class chat.

I agree with the previous post that it was a nice way to end the class with a discussion of future careers in public health and health communication. Its always helpful to have a perspective on how to apply what we learn in ph into our careers. Our discussion on evaluations was interesting because I am taking PH 666 and in that class we had just finished discussing program evaluation. So it was helpful to discuss evaluation in terms of health communication as opposed to interventions. Finally, I must say that I am really excited to apply my health communication knowledge into practice.

the simpsons- entertainment-Education?

I had a mixed feeling about Sex and City being entertainment education, only because in the clip we saw they do seem to tackle the issue of smoking and its negative consequences. But in the rest of the series, I think, Carrie glamorizes smoking. She is a tv ad for smoking pulled straight out of glamour ads that depict women as sexy, glamorous, and alluring because they light up. That always bothered me about that show, because it really impacts the way women think. What I didn't realize until yesterdays class, was that now I have a new forum (Ent-Educ) in which to discuss some of my favorite shows such as Sex in the City and The Simpsons.

Looking towards the Web 2.0

Its really fascinating the prospect of public health moving into a tech savy field that incorporates the latest technology with creative intervention designs (i.e. interactive games). The possiblities of public health being streamed 24/7 on the web are unless. Is it possible to think that in a few years there could be a myspace/facebook type forum just for public health communication. As I write this I think about how public health communication and interventions can become mainstream through web 2.0, but my thoughts are constrained by what is out there now. Its takes real creative and cutting edge thinkers to come up with the next big thing. My references for what can come next are constrained but was it out there now and thinking nothing can top that! Like google. And my next thought is what if there was a search engine with everything and anything related to health, could that one day be the next big thing?! I think yesterdays class was really all about getting us to think outside the box and into the future of PH.

Take advertising seriously!

I never realized there are so many forms of media advocacy out there, including movies by Michael Moore, Oprah episodes, PBS shows, etc. Its intriguing how media advocacy is out there without being overty and preaching/advocating for something. Although, I could see how that tactic of preachiness can make people distance themselves from an issue. Jean Kilbourne is a perfect example of someone who understands how to engage people in a sensitive topic, a feminist topic at that, without having to be preachy. Both Kilbourne and Dr.Engelberg got me thinking about advertising and its place in PH. Kilbourne said we need to take advertising seriously. Dr.E said we have to see what "they" are doing and how we can do it too in PH. These two points complement each other because in PH we need to pay attention to advertising and realize how much of an impact it has on people both positively and negatively. That power of influence, and the creativeness behind it is a tactic we need to do more of.

Guest lecturer, PH in the news.

I too agree that Jim Mcbride's presentation was helpful in diciphering the differences between marketing, PR, and advertising. Knowing the differences between these makes the next phase of our project a lot clearer. I also found his templates handout to be very useful. Just last week I was trying to figure out how to write a news release. I enjoyed the newspaper activity. I new we were going to find a few PH stories, but I had no idea we would find so many, especially when we thought more broadly about PH. What really struck me was Dr.Engelberg's question, is the war related to PH? I never stopped to think about it in that way. But I definitely think it is a PH concern, not only for the soldiers fighting, but their families as well. After analyzing news stories this morning and their relationship to PH, I was amazed to find out that PH touches on so many areas of our lives.

Guest lecturer.

I found the guest lecturer,Dr.Linda Lloyd, to be informative, insightful, and reflective. I appreciated how forthcoming she was about her own mistakes in health communication. The whole presentation really brought our discussion of formative research to full circle, especially with poster examples. Sitting there I just kept thinking how could these mistakes have been made, it seems so obvious to test the behavior, test the messages, and understand the problem. I guess its been ingrained in me enough that FR is a crucial part of health promotion. I am really grateful for Dr.Lloyd's presentation. Its always freshing hearing about someone's experience in the real world of public health along with the lessons they have learned.
On another note, I also found our discussion on needs versus wants to be insightful. The needle exchange example made me realize how tricky it can be phrasing and posing questions to people, especially when dealing with a sensitive topic. The key is to find a way to understand people's responses beyond the "yes", "no" answer, and hopefully find a happy medium between the two. This is a lesson and example I will definitely position high on my "top of mind ladder".

Reality Check

There were a lot of great take home messages in yesterdays class. One of of these had to do with a my personal reality check that occurred during the "benefits and support" exercise. When, as a group, we answered the benefit that our target population would get from participating in Project SOL we didn't question our answer. In fact, I don't think we felt that our answer was inconsistent with what our population might really find as a benefit. After Dr.Engelberg's feedback I had a total reality check moment realizing that being in public health really shapes my thoughts and opinions. I mean its kind of obvious that what you study influences the way you see the world. But this realization was more about recognizing how as a future public health professional I always need to keep in mind where I am coming from in creating messages and where my audience is coming from. The other take home message I walked away with had to do with sticking to our core values when making decisions. Again, it seems so obvious but sometimes you just need someone to remind you of these kinds of things. Acknowledging that our core values are there so we can stay grounded, step back to make decisions, and avoid the influence of risk communication, is a concept that I think, as public health professionals, we should keep close to us.

Low literacy is an issue for PH!

It was really eye opening watching the videos on literarcy in todays class. It was incredible to hear first hand accounts of people who unknowingly endangered their lives and health because they weren't able to read warning labels or their prescription label properly. This really drove home a point made in the video; that low literacy stops people from taking action in self care, the care of others, action within the community, and at work. Imagine the consequences of someone not being able to read a warning sign properly within the work place and how that might affect other workers. I wouldn't blame the person who made the mistake, but rather the person who wrote the warning sign/label. Although I can read at an educated level, I know I wouldn't mind health and safety material to be written in plain language. I really identified with the people in both videos. Just because I could read at a higher level than them doesn't mean it makes it any easier when I have to read my insurance coverage booklet, or the lengthy information sheet that comes with prescriptions. This makes me wonder though if its in the best interest of insurance companies, like Medicare, to have patients not understand all the benefits they are entitled too. The less a client knows about their insurance coverage, the better it can be for the insurance company. Well, this is at least my hypothesis of the day.

Lessons of the day...

There were some really great points we touched on in todays class. First of all I really enjoyed this weeks article on "Hard-to-reach" groups. It made so much sense and I appreciated the fact that it put the blame on the researchers. I think labeling a group as "hard-to-reach" is a perfect excuse for researchers, program implementers, etc. to not be innovative in their communication tactics. I feel its so valuable to now have this new perspective that there is no "hard to reach" groups but rather "we" are doing a good job of reaching them. On the opposite side of the spectrum are those that are trying desperately and innovatively to get at their target audience. Case in point Sprite, MTV, Nike, etc. I couldn't help but feel that no matter how they market their products for teenagers teens are still made out to be suckers. Companys try to say in their ads that we care about you, and what you think. But lets face it all they care about is how can they make you believe all that even though they just want your money. Or in the case of teenagers, their parents money. Despite my pessimistic view on the marketing tactics seen in the video we watched I do see the silver lining; get to know your audience so you can best communicate reciprocally between you and them. Which brings me to last great lesson of the day, that is to follow top industries to see what they are doing in terms of marketing and apply that to health promotion campaigns. Again, as with the article it makes perfect sense and without this class I don't think I would have thought of that or at least thought that it could work in health promotion.

Yay to segmentation by sushi!

I too agree that this is the best class yet!! Even my husband who hears me talk about my project and course discussions thinks this is a really interesting class. So kudos to the course for actually getting him to listen to me when I go on about what I learned today. The segmentation by sushi was a great way to visual each element of segmentation. After reading the article on segmentation in the reader the concept still wasn't very clear. But actually trying to segment our class and then come up with on the spot interventions really made it clear! The best part was taking it to that second step and coming up with possible campaign messages and interventions. It really puts theory into practice, and there is no better learning than that. On another note I took the VALS survey and found that it was totally way off on one of my traits and totally correct on the secondary trait. Which made me wonder how accurate is this test and similar profiling tests?

Is a "skinny" drink offensive?

So I come home from class thinking about how segmentation works and how to tailor messages to people based on segmentation characteristics. I see this story on msn which makes me wonder did Starbucks do their homework or are the people they aren't targeting the most upset. They claim their "skinny" latte is for health conscious people. As a health conscious person I don't think calling a drink skinny to denote its low fat would work on me. Take a look and see if it would work on you or if you're just offended.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/AreStarbucksSkinnyDrinksOffensive.aspx

Spilling your guts & Storytelling.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend class this week. Apparently I missed out on some interesting topics. I did however do the spill your guts assignment and look over the story telling video and articles. These served as my lessons for the week. The two people I got to "spill their guts" were my hairdresser and a beauty product rep. at Target. A few things that surprised me were that I have had several encounters with these people, but I would never really say I know who they are, at least not until now. After a while of conversing I was able to get them to talk about themselves more personally. Which was weird, because when I travel I strike up conversations with people very often and right away get at those basic questions of who you are. But these two people that I have had frequent conversations with it was a bit harder to segway into a conversation we should've probably had when we first met. This assignment also made me realize that in our day to day (at least in mine) its getting so much harder to interact with people, especially have a conversation. At the bank we can use drive throughs, at the supermarket we can do self-checkout, on the public transportation people are either on their cell phones or are listening to music through earphones. No wonder conversations between people (in whatever context) have to offer more, like a story. Stories have a way of capturing peoples attention and creating this common ground between people. I really found the weblinks and video on storytelling useful and interesting.

Sex ed. in the 21st century.

http://midwestteensexshow.com/

"Breaking through the clutter"-reflections

"Breaking through the clutter" definitely helped put into a better perspective what advertisers want to accomplish when putting together their ad campaigns. Most of the time I watch commercials and either think they stink or they are funny. Rarely do I get the sense that I really understand what the ad is trying to convey. But after watching this video I feel compelled to ask myself what do advertisers want me to Think/feel/do after being exposed to their ads. I also now wonder how many advertisers spend the time to do quality formative research on their target audience; so many times I see ads that seem to play up a stereotype of a target audience. I found it interesting that one of the advertisers felt uneasy about people opening up to the researcher. He was uncomfortable by this because he wasn’t sure if it was right to have people share more than they were asked to in order for advertisers to understand their customers. I think it was more a question of how are we using this information and is it ethical. This is what I ultimately got from watching this video; how are we using formative research? And for whose benefit?

The gap btw...

The best part about class this week was putting into practice the theories discussed. I had a true moment of realization when working on our campaign for teenagers and nutrition. When we were trying to figure out the details of our campaign we kept asking ourselves "what do teenagers like?" I mean it wasn't THAT long ago since I was a teenager; but there I was assuming this is what teenagers like, don't like, do or don't do. The distance between me and my target population was evident. Its the kind of gap captured in our discussion of sender driven messages (us centered) as opposed to receiver driven-where we put "them" at the center. I am intrigued at the possibility of empowering people through receiver driven messages and of doing research that puts them first and not the goals and expectations of health professionals and research sponsors.

Reflecting on "communication" & fried eggs.

I am really excited about this course because it tackles an aspect of public health that everyone can relate to. The definitions exercise stumped me for a bit and I loved it for that reason. So often we go about using terms that seem simple enough to understand but when it comes to defining them the words become so much more complex. The video tied in so well with diseminating what communication is and all the forms it can take. Watching some of the campaigns reminded me of my youth, and made me reflect on the bigger question-did they actually influence my health behavior in the long run? Or did they just confuse me- a la the fried egg representing a brain on drugs. -see you all next week.

Not a blogger...but here I am blogging.

For one of my PH courses this Spring '08 semester I am required to post blogs throughout the semester in order to share my thoughts and comments about the ongoings of the class and the material. So please bear with me as I venture into this new form of relating my thoughts and opinions. Hopefully my fingers will be able to keep up with my train of thought and you won't get lost in what can often be described as a maze of thoughts streaming from left to right, up and down, side to side.

-enjoy.