142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

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California Students Direct Change for Suicide Prevention and Mental Health: Outcomes from a statewide student video contest in California

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Monday, November 17, 2014 : 3:30 PM - 3:50 PM

Jana Sczersputowski, MPH , Your Social Marketer, Inc, San Diego, CA
Audio (mp3) recording Recorded Presentation (mp4)
Students across California were asked to submit 60-second videos in one of two categories:  Suicide Prevention or Ending the Silence of Mental Illness. Through exposure to the submission guidelines and judging forms youth participants, school staff and judges were exposed to “safe messaging” guidelines for mental health and suicide prevention, warning signs,  how to appropriately respond to someone in distress, as well as how to stand up for others who are different.    DVDs with the winning videos were distributed widely throughout the state to further prevention efforts. 

A total of 371 videos were submitted, representing 922 students and 142 schools.   Over 200 school-based prevention programs were donated to schools who participated in the contest; over 4000 schools received information about effective school-based prevention programs.  Based on a post contest survey 92.9% of the students (n: 199) agreed that the contest inspired them to change the way they think about mental health and suicide prevention; 89.9% of students agreed that it inspired them to get involved in suicide prevention, mental health or stigma busting activities.  After judging contest videos, 95% of judges were either likely or very likely to reference safe messaging guidelines when creating content related to suicide or suicide prevention in the future.

Learning Areas:

Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs

Learning Objectives:
Describe strategies to develop a video contest as a way to engage students and schools in prevention and health education. Differentiate between various approaches for engaging youth and the general public. Assess how these activities integrated public-private partnerships to achieve outcomes.

Keyword(s): Mental Health, Youth

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Jana Sczersputowski has over 12 years of experience in developing, implementing and evaluating county and statewide community-based and school based social marketing campaigns. As the project manager for the contest, she developed the strategy and oversaw all aspects of implementation.
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.

Back to: 3391.0: Community Mental Health Promotion Programs (organized jointly with Mental Health section)