141st APHA Annual Meeting

In This section

287400
Monday campaigns – raising health online through grassroots movements

Tuesday, November 5, 2013 : 11:00 AM - 11:15 AM

Rachelle Reeder, MPH , The Monday Campaigns, The Monday Campaigns, New York, NY
Morgan Johnson, MPH , The Monday Campaigns, New York, NY
Public health practitioners often struggle with how to effectively deliver health communications to online audiences, particularly through social media channels. The ideal approach is to disseminate health communications when audiences are most receptive to these messages. New research shows that engaging audiences weekly on Mondays may be an ideal window of time to motivate people to start and maintain healthy behaviors.

By leveraging the natural tendency to focus on health behaviors at the beginning of the week, health promotion initiatives that use email, text, or social media messaging can boost participant engagement and contribute to establishing habitual thinking about health. Building on this idea, The Monday Campaigns created a fleet of creative campaigns centered on the message for audiences to use Monday as the day they reflect on their health choices and make efforts to engage in healthy behaviors.

Several diverse organizations across the country are participating in “Monday” campaigns, using them as platforms to increase participation in their comprehensive health initiatives that cover a range of health behaviors such as exercise, proper nutrition, sexual health, tobacco cessation, caregiver health, and more. Most notably, “Meatless Monday” has flourished online, with tens of thousands of followers on social media coming together each week to swap recipes and share their support.

This session describes the grassroots success of “Monday” initiatives online, and furthermore, demonstrates how other organizations can replicate these successes with their own populations by leveraging the “Monday Effect” to successfully disseminate health communications and improve programmatic outcomes.

Learning Areas:
Administer health education strategies, interventions and programs
Communication and informatics
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Other professions or practice related to public health
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs

Learning Objectives:
Describe the development and success of the various “Monday” campaigns presented Describe the successful social media and online messaging strategies used by the various “Monday” campaigns. Discuss ways in which other program developers and researchers can leverage the “Monday Effect” to improve and expand their own health services.

Keywords: Communication, Social Marketing

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: As the Program and Research Associate at The Monday Campaigns, I have been involved with pilot recruitment, program implementation, and campaign evaluation for all campaigns developed by The Monday Campaigns, and can speak in detail about them. I have my MPH and a background in health communications and social marketing, and experience managing social media for university health service clinics.
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.