Community promotional awareness campaign of low-cost primary care safety net clinic for medically underserved bilingual population in Southern California; A comprehensive approach

During Fall 2008, a Needs and Assets Assessment was conducted in a Southern California Community by seven Loma Linda University graduate students in public health. The Assessment focused on identifying community members' perception of a local clinic that has existed since the 1960s. The findings showed that many community members were unaware of the clinic and that patients who attended the clinic were unaware of the many existing services at the clinic. A promotional campaign was developed to address these findings. The campaign, consisting of a 5 minute informational DVD, radio/ TV Public Service Announcements and flyers, has been planned in detail and will launch at the end of June 2009.Tracking its success calls for a variety of evaluation measures. A pre-survey to a post- survey completed by patients in the main waiting room before and after viewing the informative DVD, respectively, will be conducted throughout the summer of 2009 and will allow for evaluation of whether patient awareness of services increased. The external campaign will be evaluated through the selected media sources (TV, radio stations, internet, and flyers) tracking devices. New patient's identification of one of these sources as their initial reason for using the clinic will be established through a question included in the pre-survey and through new patients contacting the clinic through a unique phone number solely used for the promotional purposes. The results of this promotional campaign can be individually modified to increase awareness of primary care services among other medically underserved populations.