Director's Blog
Health Marketing Musings
from Jay M. Bernhardt, PhD, MPH
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Like many Americans, I closely followed the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the "Economic Stimulus Plan." As a public health professional, I am keenly interested in the parts of the stimulus bill that promote health, such as the Prevention and Wellness Fund, which Jeanne Lambert wrote about as a "Wellness Trust" long before she was Deputy Director of the White House Office of Health Reform.
As a health marketer, one area that caught my attention was the $7.2 billion to extend broadband internet access to more Americans, particularly those living in underserved and rural communities. As reported in USA Today, recent surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project have found that only 57% of Americans subscribe to broadband at home, while 9% rely on dial-up service. Some people use the internet in public places like the library, while close to 25% of Americans don't use the internet at all. The USA Today article goes on to say, "These holdouts are the hardest to reach. They include many poor and elderly people, as well as residents of rural areas that the big broadband providers have abandoned as too costly to serve – an issue that Congress is trying to address."
Public health has recognized internet access as an issue for some time. Healthy People 2010, for example, includes an objective to increase the proportion of households with internet access to 80%. The mid-course review of Healthy People progress notes that "internet access is critical to disease prevention, health promotion, and health care because of the increasing amount of information and services available via the internet. When internet access is not universal, some segments of the population are excluded from knowing about and therefore using many new tools and information sources; the result is additional disparities."
With more Americans able to access the internet in more places, we can certainly expect to see an increase in the number of people using electronic media to research and share health information. The public's increasing use of social media to inform health decisions, paired with the Obama Administration's stated interest in promoting public health, preventive health care services, and preparedness, make it more important than ever for public health organizations to better use health marketing tools.
As regular readers of this blog already know, health marketing applies marketing techniques traditionally used to sell products to help "sell" health promotion and disease prevention by changing people's behaviors. Marketers and advertisers have used these techniques for decades, but instead of selling goods such as soft drinks and appliances, those of us in health marketing are selling positive behavior change—like increased physical activity, smoking cessation, regular cancer screening, safer sex, and immunization—among many others.
Although the fields are growing, health communication and social marketing are still relatively new to public heath, and very different from the old approach of simply telling people what they should do to be healthy and then hoping they do it. We all know that we should get more physical activity and eat more vegetables, but just knowing this does not always translate into taking more trips to the gym or having salads for lunch. A health marketing approach harnesses the power of marketing science and public health behavioral theory to deliver health recommendations and guidance in ways that are more relevant and persuasive for people. In concrete terms, this means that as broadband internet access increases, and more people turn to the web for health information and support, we must leverage what we know works well, and continue to develop new ways to engage people in this online and often interactive environment.
At the heart of health marketing is a commitment to providing information where, when, and how people want to access and use it. The new information technologies that have proliferated on the internet in the last few years—internet blogs, social media such as Facebook and Twitter, mobile information delivery systems, podcasts, Wikis, as well as other new communication channels—are already being used by increasingly large segments of the U.S. population, and represent an exciting and fertile ground to deliver public health messages. Improving the performance of the internet through increased use of broadband will make these innovative technologies more effective and affordable for all Americans.
Another potential benefit of increasing broadband access is the ability of people to communicate with each other, especially in matters of health. For example, just recently (2/16/2009), the New York Times reported that Zagat, best known for its restaurant and hotel reviews, is rolling out a customer-driven Doctor's Guide for people insured by Wellpoint. Research from the Annual Edelman Trust Barometer shows many people increasingly seek out health information from "people like myself," and often value this information more than information from experts or other authoritative sources. It is critical for public health professionals to adapt to this changing environment and to use new communication vehicles to provide health information and guidance to people when they want it, where they want it, and in ways that make it easier for them to apply the information to their own lives. In doing so, we can make wellness and prevention relevant to people's lives and easier for them to make the significant changes that will help keep themselves and their families healthier.
It is encouraging that the importance of increasing internet access and performance is gaining attention and resources because internet access and the role of social media in individual health decision-making will continue to expand in the coming years. Many of us in public health have begun to realize the potential of electronic health marketing, and now is the time for all of us in the field to fully embrace health marketing approaches in order to ensure that all people have access to the credible health information they need to make healthy decisions.
Posted by Jay on Monday, March 30, 2009 at 4:00pm ET
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Jay,
It will be interesting to see if internet access solves the problem of people lacking appropriate health info. It would, however, be a shame if improved internet access actually led to some of the new recipients becoming more sedentary. I think the key is that information be utilized; otherwise, the internet access can become entertainment.
Trent Thomason
Received from Trent Thomason on Monday, April 20, 2009 at 11:31am ETComment
The CDC has recognized the fluoridation of drinking water as one of ten great public health achievements of the twentieth century. Since its introduction into water supplies following WWII, water fluoridation has helped improve the quality of life in the United States by reducing pain and suffering related to tooth decay, time lost from school and work, and money spent to restore, remove, or replace decayed teeth. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. residents, or about 184 million people, who get water from public water systems have fluoridated water.
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Posted by Jay on Monday, March 16, 2009 at 2:00pm ETSubmit a comment
Everyone knows that health communication and marketing can raise awareness about health issues and promote prevention behaviors. But did you know that health communication and social media marketing plays a critical role in responding to outbreaks? Right now, CDC is participating in a unique, interagency collaboration with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to use interactive and social media to enhance the response to the recent Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak and its associated recall of peanut butter and peanut-containing products. Many of my colleagues in the National Center for Health Marketing are working closely with scientists and communicators in the National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases (NCZVED), including people in NCHM's Division of eHealth Marketing and the Emergency Risk Communication Branch in the Division of Health Communication and Marketing.
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Posted by Jay on Tuesday, February 3, 2009 at 5:00pm ETSubmit a comment
In reviewing the work of health marketing at CDC last year, I am extremely proud of the amazing things we achieved. If one word were required to sum up 2008, that word would have to be busy! In 2008, we created and launched CDC-TV, an online series of direct-to-consumer health videos. We posted exciting and interactive Health-e-Cards, created original podcasts and vodcasts with centers throughout CDC, and greatly expanded our outreach with web-based and mobile technologies. We also advanced and strengthened our science base through increased research, evaluation, and collaboration. Because of these efforts, people can now access CDC's science-based health messages and resources in ways that are more customer-centered than ever before, not only in print, but also on the air, interactively on the web, on their mobile devices, and through the social media they use.
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Posted by Jay on Monday, January 26, 2009 at 3:00pm ETSubmit a comment
I got my flu vaccination. Have you gotten yours? If you haven't, it's not too late to prevent getting the flu. In fact, that's the main message of National Influenza Vaccination Week, which is taking place this week, December 8-14, 2008. While flu season in the United States generally runs from October through May, people who get vaccinated in December or later can still protect themselves and others from the flu. Most of the time influenza activity peaks in January. Although the CDC has long promoted annual influenza vaccination as the single most important thing one can do to prevent catching the flu, far too many people still do not take this preventive action. Each year, on average in the United States, more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu complications and about 36,000 people die.
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Posted by Jay on Tuesday, December 9, 2008 at 2:00pm ETSubmit a comment
This week, I'm proud to mention a recent success in disseminating a much needed CDC health message at one of our nation's most prestigious museums, the Smithsonian. The original artwork from the Eagle Books series developed for children by CDC's Division of Diabetes Translation will be exhibited at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. and New York City through January 4, 2009. The exhibition, "Through the Eyes of the Eagle: Illustrating Healthy Living for Children," represents the first time the museum has ever featured an exhibition to address health issues that face Native Americans. Though the book series focuses on Native American children, it speaks to all children and their parents about a health issue that increasingly threatens our kids: diabetes.
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Posted by Jay on Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 2:00pm ETSubmit a comment
Wikipedia describes a social network as "a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission, or airline routes. The resulting structures are often very complex."
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Posted by Jay on Monday, July 7, 2008 at 3:00pm ETSubmit a comment
To help prepare for National HIV Testing Day (June 27, 2008), AIDS.gov is sponsoring a Webinar for Bloggers (sometimes called a 'blogginar') on Tuesday, June 17th at 2:00pm eastern time. Beginning with a similar webinar last year, AIDS.gov has been communicating directly with bloggers so they can help encourage their readers to get tested. Since one in four Americans living with HIV is unaware of having it, this effort is a crucial piece of protecting and improving the health of people in the US. It also is an excellent example how Web 2.0 strategies can be used to impact health.
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Posted by Jay on Friday, June 13, 2008 at 10:00am ETSubmit a comment
I've asked Melinda Frost, former lead for NCHM's Global Communication and Marketing team, to write a guest blog for this month's edition of Health Marketing Musings. Since early November, Melinda has served in a unique capacity for our Center. She works under the US Embassy in Beijing, China as the first US CDC health communications officer placed overseas. One of her roles is to determine how US CDC can best partner with China's Ministry of Health to increase their ability to deliver tailored, culturally appropriate health information to affected populations at national and sub-national levels. – Jay Bernhardt
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Posted by Melinda Frost, MA, MPH on Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 12:00pm ETSubmit a comment
The most important platform in the world for collecting and delivering targeted and tailored health information during the first half of the 21st Century will be mobile phones. Mobile phones and integrated wireless devices will revolutionize the practice of public health and touch billions of lives around the world.
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Posted by Jay on Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 12:00pm ETSubmit a comment
Health Literacy is the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions, as defined by the National Library of Medicine and as used in Healthy People 2010. According to the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), more than 77 million adults in the US demonstrate basic or below basic health literacy skills.
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Posted by Jay on Monday, December 17, 2007 at 11:00am ETSubmit a comment
On December 1, 2007, the world will collectively observe World AIDS Day. Since 1988, World AIDS Day has provided an important opportunity for governments, organizations, communities, and individuals to generate greater public awareness of the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and to re-energize those fighting against it. Worldwide, HIV prevalence—the percentage of people living with HIV—has leveled off and the number of new infections dropped in 2007. However, AIDS remains among the leading causes of death around the world and continues to be the primary cause of death in Africa. In 2007, an estimated 2.1 million died of AIDS.
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Posted by Jay on Friday, November 30, 2007 at 3:00pm ETSubmit a comment
On Saturday October 19, I attended part of the first CONNECT. Public Relations & Social Media Conference hosted by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. The agenda included renowned PR professionals (or "Rock Stars" as accurately described by Dr. Kaye Sweetser) who discussed cutting-edge social media techniques and how they can be used in PR and marketing. Many thanks to UGA for organizing and including me in this event. I invite you to browse the CONNECT blog, where you can find audio, blogs, links, twitter content, podcasts, photos and more from the conference.
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Posted by Jay on Monday, October 29, 2007 at 12:00pm ETSubmit a comment
This is an exciting time to be working in health communication, marketing, and media. While each of these areas has roots in distinct disciplines, what brings us together is our shared belief that customers (however defined) matter most, information is powerful, and protecting and promoting people's health is a noble cause worth fighting for.
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Posted by Jay on Thursday, August 30, 2007 at 2:00pm ETSubmit a comment
One of the mainstays of health marketing is to designate a day (or week or month) to a public health issue and use that day and the time leading up to it to raise awareness and promote health messages. Unfortunately, this strategy has become so commonplace that nearly every week has one, if not several, worthwhile observances associated with it, thereby reducing the likelihood of getting attention among the many competing stories appearing in the media. Nonetheless, some "days" are particularly important and well worth our attention and efforts.
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Posted by Jay on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 at 11:00am ETSubmit a comment
Last week I attended a morning panel presentation at Emory University's Goizueta Business School featuring Richard Edelman, Chairman and CEO of Edelman. Richard discussed the 2007 Edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual survey of influentials from 18 countries and their perceptions of trust and credibility in different organizational sectors and information sources.
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Posted by Jay on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at 5:00pm ETSubmit a comment
When I came to CDC in August 2005, I brought with me one major goal: to improve the CDC website. I am proud to say that as of April 19, 2007, we have accomplished this goal with the launch of the new CDC.gov homepage and top-level navigation pages. Not that the old site was that bad compared to some others (who will remain nameless), but it certainly wasn't nearly as good as it could be. The design of the new site is based on science, best practices, and evidence-based research, like everything else we do at the CDC and the National Center for Health Marketing.
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Posted by: Jay on Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 9:00am ETSubmit a comment
Before I share my topic for this blog, I have an admission to make. I am a lousy blogger. This blog entry is long overdue. I deeply believe in blogging and the incredible power of personal narrative, but am having a hard time keeping it fresh. I invite suggestions from veteran bloggers to let me know how they manage to do their day jobs and still keep their blog novel.
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Posted by: Jay at 5:00 PM on Monday, March 5, 2007Submit a comment
Congratulations and thanks are due to Dimitry Kruglyak from the Medical Blog Network (http://www.healthvoices.com/), who organized and recently hosted the first Healthcare Blogging Summit in Washington, DC as part of Consumer Health World. I was honored to speak at the Summit and share the dais with many accomplished innovators and leaders in the world of health-related blogging. A number of participants and attendees have written about the Summit and you can find their feedback here: http://www.technorati.com/search/healthcare+blogging+summit
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Posted by: Jay at 12:00 PM on Thursday, December 28, 2006Submit a comment
It was great seeing old colleagues and meeting new innovators in Toronto recently at the 11th World Congress on Internet in Medicine (MedNet) (http://www.mednetcongress.org/). I had the honor of delivering the keynote address at the conference (
12 pages/1.72 MB) and today's blog will offer a brief synopsis of my remarks.
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Posted by: Jay at 2:00 PM on Tuesday, November 14, 2006Submit a comment
For the last several weeks, CDC has been actively engaged leading the public health response to the E. coli outbreak associated with fresh spinach that has sickened more than 150 people and may have claimed three lives. When public health emergencies or outbreaks occur, the CDC activates the Director's Emergency Operation Center (DEOC) [here is a photo of the DEOC]. One of the core components of the DEOC is the Joint Information Center (JIC) led by the Emergency Communication System (ECS), which is an agency wide risk communication activity led by the National Center for Health Marketing (NCHM). [Note: CDC loves its acronyms!] The ECS is an amazing group of CDC professionals who spring into action when needed and work tirelessly, including nights and weekends, to help save and protect countless lives through health and risk communication targeted at professionals and the public. Watching the dedicated and professional response of the DEOC and the ECS in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year was truly inspiring.
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Posted by: Jay at 6:00 PM on Wednesday, October 11, 2006Submit a comment
It is my pleasure to welcome our first "guest blogger" to health marketing musings. The following remarks are from my colleague Dan Rutz, MPH, the Associate Director of Communication Science from the CDC National Center for Preparedness, Detection, and Control of Infectious Diseases (NCPDCID). He shares interesting and important observations about the frailty of our human experience and our communication science, and he calls for strengthening both. As always, reader comments are welcome and encouraged.
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Posted by: Dan Rutz at 2:10 PM on Friday, September 8, 2006Submit a comment
More than any other question, the one I am most frequently asked has to do with the name of our center at CDC, the National Center for Health Marketing (NCHM): "What is health marketing?" Other common questions include "What is the difference between health communication and health marketing?" "Is it the same thing as social marketing?" and "Why is CDC trying to change the name of our field?!?" In this, my second blog entry, I'll try to answer some of these questions and share my thoughts on the sensitive issue of disciplinary names and identities.
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Posted by: Jay at 3:45 PM on Tuesday, August 22, 2006Submit a comment
Legendary newsman Daniel Schorr once observed, "If you don't exist in the media, for all practical purposes, you don't exist." The same can be said today for the web—if you don't have an online presence, and if you don't show up in Google, for all practical purposes, you don't exist. Therefore, I'm happy to announce that the National Center for Health Marketing (NCHM) at the CDC finally exists!
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Posted by: Jay at 3:45 PM on Thursday, July 13, 2006Submit a comment
Dr. Jay M. Bernhardt is the Director of the National Center for Health Marketing at the CDC. The opinions expressed in this blog are those of its authors and may not represent the official positions of the Centers for Disease Control or the Department of Health and Human Services.