256657 Personal Stories: Educating the Public About the Real-Life Impact of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 : 1:30 PM - 1:50 PM

Catherine Flores Martin , California Immunization Coalition, Sacramento, CA
     
Shot by Shot: Stories of Vaccine Preventable Diseases (SBS) is an award-winning, public awareness project to introduce new generations of parents, clinicians, media, policymakers and immunization advocates to the impact of VPDs on an individual and his/her family. The project has over 100 videos in a collected online storybank. As the prevalence of VPDs lessens in our communities, people are less familiar with once common diseases. This absence of personal experience has allowed many new parents to question the need for immunization, and to minimize the risks of potentially serious diseases.

Research indicates that communication that makes an emotional impact is more likely to capture our attention, leave a lasting impression, and be more persuasive than abstract data. The SBS storybank brings back this deeply personal experience, such as hearing a mother who lost a child to pertussis, or woman who battled cervical cancer.

By building partnerships and sharing successful strategies, SBS helps other organizations doing disease and immunization education to incorporate stories into their local efforts. SBS's spectrum of stories allows professionals to integrate a story profile that will resonate with unique target audiences.

Since its 2010 launch, the site has received nearly 33,000 visitors from across the nation and internationally. Multiple states have featured SBS stories in efforts from blogs targeting rural, Latino communities to DVDs played in urban hospital waiting rooms and pediatric vaccine training programs. The video-sharing platform allows the power of individuals' life experiences to reach diverse populations.

Learning Areas:
Advocacy for health and health education
Communication and informatics
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Protection of the public in relation to communicable diseases including prevention or control

Learning Objectives:
1) Describe at least 3 strategies to integrate personal stories into informing efforts. 2) Articulate how Shot by Shot can enhance efforts to effectively communicate with targeted, hard-to-reach populations. 3) Demonstrate how Shot by Shot videos can be incorporated into an organization’s social media efforts.

Keywords: Immunizations, Child Health Promotion

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the Director of the California Immunization Coalition and have been involved founding the "Shot by Shot: Stories of Preventable Diseases" project as well as critical work on building partnerships and determining protocols for the story gallery.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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