I like your editorial in Preventing Chronic Disease (Improving Health through Health Marketing). Offers a coherent model of health communication, marketing, etc. as elements of health marketing. I also like the irony of having to market marketing to achieve dissemination of the marketing strategy for health improvement. Which brings me to a question: Who do you envision as NCHM's primary "customer?" Practitioners who need access to existing products developed using health marketing methods? Practitioners who need training in health marketing methods so they can apply marketing methods to their own product design and development? End users who have specific health risk reduction needs and would benefit from using evidence-based products intended to address those needs? I ask because I think which of these (or other) target groups are emphasized (resource wise) will have plenty of downstream implications for long-term impact.

Best,
Christine Jackson, Ph.D.
PIRE Chapel Hill Center

Comment

Thanks for your comments, Chris, and for being the first contributor to my blog! As a new start-up, NCHM has at least two primary customers. First, our internal collaborators from other units at CDC and HHS (that are mostly illness- or disease-specific). NCHM has many products and services that can benefit the rest of CDC, but so far our client list is relatively modest. We are working hard to increase our most innovative product line, strengthen the quality and experience of our workforce, and raise awareness internally about all we have to offer. One of our highest demand services is developing strategic marketing plans for existing CDC products, and to that end, we have hired a number of seasoned marketers to lead this effort.

Our other customers, obviously, are external to CDC and include health professionals, partners, and the public. Our goal here is to improve all of CDC's communication, marketing, and partnership initiatives to ensure they are customer-centered and science/evidence-based. In some ways, you might say we are trying to build "a world-class agency" inside our world-class agency. We have made some important first steps but we still have a ways to go.

Jay

Posted by Jay on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 4:10pm ET Comment

If your mother understands what you do for a living, you're way ahead of the game. Question: The current draft of the ASPH cross-cutting competencies in communication and informatics do not include any reference to marketing.

Is this an oversight that should be addressed prior to finalizing the competencies?

All the best,

Edward Maibach, MPH, PhD
Professor and Director
Public Health Communication & Marketing Program School of Public Health and Health Services The George Washington University

Received from Edward Maibach on Thursday, August 3, 2006 at 4:46pm ET Comment

Thanks, Ed, for your question. I think it is great that the Association of Schools of Public Health is taking steps to respond to the IOM's recommendations to ensure that all MPH students from accredited schools receive competency-based instruction in communication and informatics. I have not closely examined the competencies that have been developed to date, but agree that public health students from all disciplinary areas should learn about theories, models, and principles of health communication, social marketing, and e-health promotion. Whether or not these topics get into the final ASPH competency lists, the best public health schools and programs would be doing their students and the future public health workforce a service by adequately covering these important topics.

Posted by Jay on Monday, August 7, 2006 at 10:00am ET Comment

Welcome to the Blogosphere! I’m glad that you’ll be adding your voice to the few of us who are blogging about social marketing. I don’t know of other government agencies that have a blog, so you are on the cutting edge in that regard. I hope you will consider upgrading your blogging software so that you can publish an RSS feed and let people subscribe to your posts (there are many free options you can use and still have the blog within your own website). My hope is that once you start blogging, you’ll catch the bug and publish more frequently than every couple of weeks.

Best,
Nedra Weinreich
Spare Change Blog: http://www.social-marketing.com/blog/
Weinreich Communications

Received from Nedra Weinreich on Monday, August 7, 2006 at 6:48pm ET Comment

Welcome to the bloggosphere. Some physicians have been blogging for a while, and have developed a medical blogging community with a weekly roundup of the best articles, submitted by the author, at "Grand Rounds" and read by tens of thousands: http://blogborygmi.blogspot.com/2004/09/grand-rounds-archive-upcoming-schedule.html

You may like to participate.

One way to assist other bloggers in continuing the conversation that you start here is by using blogging software that:

1. Provides a URL for each post. That way, bloggers can reference specific articles you write, just as if we were citing a reference in a journal article.
2. Provide moderated comments that don't require us to email you. Just easier.
3. Provide an RSS feed, or syndication feed of your blog so that bloggers can be notified of new entries when you post them.

Love to see more of your writing here!

Sincerely,
Enoch Choi, MD
Palo Alto Medical Foundation
http://www.enochchoi.com/thoughts/

Received from Enoch Choi on Tuesday, August 8, 2006 at 3:46am ET Comment

I read this blog and your editorial, "Improving Health through Health Marketing" with great interest. I am a MPH student at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and I am sure I will have chance to dig in more about health marketing in some of my classes.

It is a shame that when we hear the term "health marketing" in Japan, it means how to make money in health-related industry, including clinics and hospitals. The terminology is confusing in Japan, I guess.

By the way, my subspecialty is ophthalmology and I am interested in how to construct an effective and sustainable prevention program against diabetic retinopathy. Do you have any ideas if there are any researchers or sources using health marketing concepts in regard to diabetes/diabetes complication area? Or what would you suggest for me to begin with in this area?

Best regards,
Ryo

Ryo Kawasaki, MD
MPH candidate 2007
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Johns Hopkins University

Instructor
Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science
Faculty of Medicine
Yamagata University
JAPAN

Received from Ryo Kawasaki on Tuesday, August 8, 2006 at 6:55pm ET Comment

There have been a few comments on the blog about using 'real blog software' and setting up RSS feeds for subscriptions. The particulars of the CDC web environment make using real blog software very problematic, but we will be able to syndicate the blog even without that. It relates to the way the new podcasts page (http://www2a.cdc.gov/podcasts/) has been created. When we get its administration functions finished up, we'll be able to initiate and easily maintain the RSS feed for the blog even without automatic blogging software. We may be limited on the technology front, but we are not limited in our creativity!

Posted by Fred Smith (NCHM's CDC.gov web team) on Tuesday, August 15, 2006 at 10:00am ET Comment

Was going to write a blog article on the existence of your blog (from the Agonist, www.agonist.org) but unfortunately you don't seem to have updated in a month! While non political blogs don't need to update too often, enough posts to look "alive" will help you build up your baseline traffic, get links and get onto people's blogrolls (3 posts a week is a good guideline for a minimum). A CDC blog is the sort of thing that a lot of people would probably want to link to - if you had regular interesting updates.

Cheers,
Ian

Received from Ian on Saturday, August 19, 2006 at 12:57pm ET Comment

I think you have a great future in blogging. This was a very informative and entertaining article. (I hope your brother Marc reads this too!)

I am not a natural blogger, but I do enjoy being the source of information. This is why we started www.websightmd.com (that is Web Sight MD - people that do not know what we do, mock us for spelling site wrong). We Actually began as an online resource for ocular information a couple months ago, and quickly decided to make it into a marketing opportunity for respected Ophthalmologists and Optometrists. Our goal is to benefit quality Eye Doctors by increasing their online presence and profile, as well as giving the patient an opportunity of contacting highly respected and referred eye care professionals in their area. If you or your visitors would like to recommend physicians, they are welcome to do so. I had muscle surgery when I was a child, that I am not satisfied with as an adult (I can only read with one eye). I therefore know first hand how important skilled professionals are.

Looking forward to hearing from you and watching your online success (ours too!).

Renee,
doctors@websightmd.com

Received from Renee on Thursday, April 26, 2007 at 5:39pm ET Comment