Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #109047

Shelly Campo, PhD, Community and Behavioral Health, University of Iowa, 200 Hawkins Drive, E237 GH, Iowa City, IA 52244, 319-384-5393, shelly-campo@uiowa.edu, Tracy Routsong, MA, Department of Communication Studies, University of Iowa, 105 Becker Communication Studies Building, Iowa City, IA 52242, and Mary Losch, PhD, Center for Social & Behavioral Research, University of Northern Iowa, Sabin Hall 221, Cedar Falls, IA 50614.

A main objective of health promotion campaigns is to create messages that can be easily transferred to numerous audiences. This reduces costs and theoretically decreases the need to recreate messages that have already demonstrated success with an audience. While this goal of easy transferability is well intentioned, applicability may not be successful. An example of a gap in campaign effectiveness includes placing urban-created public service announcements into a rural community. Health disparities in rural communities are prominent. Moreover, rural communities lack resources (Conerly, 2001) for developing and testing interventions, making transference common practice (Access to health care for the uninsured in rural and frontier America, 1999; Lynch, Kaplan, & Shema, 1997). In order to test the transferability of a national campaign to a rural community, it is important to understand the opinions of people living in that community. Using colorectal cancer screening PSAs created by the CDC, researchers first conducted focus groups in rural locations across the state of Iowa. Focus groups discussed and selected PSAs that they felt related to the audience. Several PSAs were eliminated, including one that was primarily designed for rural audiences but tested in urban areas. For the second stage, researchers selected two matched rural counties. The intervention county received five weeks of paid advertising (radio, TV, and print). Following the test period, 500 residents from each county completed telephone interviews regarding their knowledge of colorectal cancer, screening practices, health habits, and attitudes about testing. Results and challenges of transferring campaigns will be discussed.

Learning Objectives: Following this presentation, audience members should be able to

(
• critique the current perspective of incorporating readily adoptable public service announcements as a best practice, (
• identify instances in which urban campaigns may not be transferable to a rural setting, (
• articulate rural differences in health care which necessitate looking at how to best disseminate information to people within a rural community.

Keywords: Health Communications, Rural Populations

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.