Improving the Health of Delaware's Children: Using Social Marketing to Advance Statewide Policy Change

This session will provide the participant with a practical “people and places” framework for planning and implementing a policy advocacy campaign based on proven social marketing principles and policy advocacy best practices. It will use the Campaign to Make Delaware's Kids the Healthiest in the Nation as a current case study. The presenters will review the policy advocacy campaign strategy; describe its approach to legislators, community leaders, media and consumer advocates; highlight key outreach and communications elements of the campaign; and describe how the campaign succeeded in achieving the endorsement of more than 150 policy influencers, a joint resolution of the Delaware state legislature, and significant movement toward policy and practice change in schools and other venues serving children. The presentation will illustrate how the “people and places” policy advocacy model can be employed to address multiple public health challenges as well as its specific applications to combating childhood overweight. Participants may expect a lively, richly illustrated presentation with practical tools that they can use to help guide the development and management of their own campaigns. The evaluation approach, and early campaign measurement metrics, will be reviewed and next steps for the campaign based on early evaluation findings will be presented.