Marketing social marketing to state health departments: Formative research for improving the nation's health

Background: Healthy People 2020 Health Communication and Health Information Technology (HC/HIT) Objective 13.1 reads: “Increase the proportion of State health departments that report using social marketing in health promotion and disease prevention programs.” Achievement of this objective requires formative research to ‘market social marketing.' Methods: Pilot research with states' public information officers revealed significant confusion regarding terminology (e.g., “social media” vs. “social marketing”). Consequently, we employed two overlapping strategies: (1) survey of information officers to identify health promotion and disease prevention programs and (2) survey of those program managers to identify social marketing activities meeting one or more of the 8 National Social Marketing Centre benchmark criteria. Standardized scores were computed for the 8 benchmarks. Results: Overall, 35 of 50 states' information officers participated (70%) as did 29 program managers (83%). States' health promotion and disease prevention programs reflected an average of 4.6 social marketing benchmarks (median = 4.5; range of 0-8). Eight state health departments met all benchmarks, placing the Healthy People 2020 baseline at 28%. Conclusions: The target for HC/HIT Objective 13.1 is that 38% (baseline plus 10%) of state health departments use social marketing by year 2020. In the interim, we have received Institutional Review Board clearance to proceed with additional formative research. We will be exploring findings presented here—e.g., 26 participants endorsed a global question about social marketing usage but only 7 of 26 met all benchmarks—as well as conducting problem identification research to inform a national strategy for achievement of this important objective.