The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #42311

C. Michael Newton-Ward, MSW, MPH¹, Christopher H. Cooke, MA, MS¹, and Christine Prue, MSPH, PhD². (1) Divsion of Public Health, NC Department of Health and Human Services, 1915 MSC, Raleigh, NC 27699-1915, (2) Office of Communication, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Rd., Mailstop D-42, Atlanta, GA 30333, 404-639-7836, mike.newton-ward@ncmail.net

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of Communication, has produced a practical tool for designing, testing, implementing and evaluating health communication programs, CDCynergy-a CD-ROM that can be easily used by public health practitioners on their personal computer. The Social Marketing National Excellence Collaborative (SMNEC), a part of the national Turning Point program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is collaborating with CDC to create a social marketing version of CDCynergy. While communication is but one aspect of a fully-developed social marketing program, the development of communication strategies and tactics in support of behavior change interventions can benefit greatly from the social marketing approach. The health communication planning and evaluation model upon which CDCynergy is based incorporates a number of social marketing principles: audience segmentation, formative research, strategy development, message design, and monitoring and evaluation. Furthermore, it provides a self-contained health communication planning tutorial that can help advance educational and professional training in social marketing. The presentation will include the following components: · An overview of health communication from a social marketing perspective; · A demonstration of CDCynergy emphasizing those aspects of the program that are based on social marketing principles; · An overview of SMNEC's plan to develop a new version of CDCynergy strictly for social marketing applications. This aspect of the program will include a review of the formative research conducted at CDC in the fall of 2001 and a discussion of development activities to date.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify social marketing principles relevant to the planning, development and design of effective health communication programs.
• Understand how to use the CDCynergy planning model that utilizes selected social marketing principles to design health communication programs.
• Understand the basic approach to navigating the CDCynergy CD-ROM on a personal computer.
• Describe how the Turning Point Social Marketing National Excellence Collaborative plans to modify CDCynergy for social marketing applications.

Keywords: Social Marketing, Communication

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: This is a product developed by CDC. The social marketing adaptation is being undertaken by the Social Marketing National Excellence Collaborative under the the Robert Wood Johnson Turning Point grant
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.