Increasing home energy costs and public safety: The use of academic-private industry partnerships to develop strategies for effective communication with hard-to-reach populations

With home fuel price increases of over 38% in Nevada in the winter of 2005/2006, a potential public health crisis was in the making for at-risk and fixed income citizens including seniors, individuals with disabilities, and low income families. As a method of getting information more effectively to consumers, the University of Nevada School of Public Health and Sierra Pacific Resources, the parent company of both Sierra Pacific Power and Nevada Power the two preeminent suppliers of natural gas and electricity to homes in Nevada, engaged in a unique academic-private industry partnership to conduct focus groups to identify the most effective way to get information to targeted at risk consumer groups. Concluding in July 2006, graduate and undergraduate students were trained in utilities management and regulation, public health communication, focus group methodology, data analysis, and report writing. The goal of this project was to assist Sierra Pacific Resources in identifying and implementing more effective strategies for communicating with consumers. The information desired from consumers was threefold: 1) To identify how targeted consumer groups prefered to receive information on energy and money saving programs 2) Consumers' familiarity with extant energy and money saving programs 3) Barriers that keep consumers from using extant programs This presentation reports on the results of these initiatives as well as the benefits of this academic-private industry partnership for MPH students, Sierra Pacific Resources and consumers.