141st APHA Annual Meeting

In This section

290542
State of professional education and training in social marketing

Wednesday, November 6, 2013 : 11:10 AM - 11:30 AM

Tali Schneider, MPH, CHES , Social Marketing Group, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
Craig Lefebvre, PhD , RTI International, Sarasota, FL
Carol A. Bryant, PhD , College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
Background: Healthy People 2020 (HP-2020)objectives call for increasing the proportion of public health and accredited master of public health programs that offer courses and professional development opportunities in social marketing. In this study, we assessed the existing social marketing, health and risk communication curricula offered at these schools in order to establish baseline data that will be used to evaluate the degree to which these objectives are met by the year 2020.

Methods: A brief online survey was developed to document course offerings in the social marketing, health and risk communication for the 2011-2012 academic year. Student enrollment and number of years a course had been offered were requested. The number of offerings and estimated number of participants for workforce development in these content areas were also collected.

Results: Data was obtained from twenty schools of public health, a response rate of 40%. Overall, 75% of the responding schools offered course in health communication and 20% offered either social marketing or risk communication courses. Specifically to social marketing, only four of the responding schools offered graduate level courses; professional development opportunities were even more limited.

Conclusions: In the academic year 2011-2012, as few as 2.5% of all enrolled public health students were exposed to any of these content areas. Our findings show that the national objectives to increase course offerings and professional development opportunities in social marketing have much room for improvement. Plans should be developed to identify the necessary actions to achieve the stated HP-2020 objectives.

Learning Areas:
Public health or related education

Learning Objectives:
List the current available social marketing professional development and master’s level training opportunities in accredited schools of public health. Define the Healthy People 2020 national objectives for social marketing curricula within schools of public health. Identify gaps in social marketing training options within schools of public health curricula that need addressing in order to achieve the national objectives

Keywords: Social Marketing, Healthy People 2020

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the research associate that worked on this study, collecting, analyzing, and reporting the data.
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.