A primary objective of any health care system is promoting the wellness of the community. It’s pretty much your raison d’être. A great way to promote health is with wellness campaigns that speak to the health conditions your community faces.
Organizations can target these programs (for example, health campaigns addressing opioid use in areas where it’s rampant), or campaigns can take on more common health problems such as obesity and tobacco use. Community wellness programs and campaigns not only position your organization as a health leader, but they can also actively engage your current patients and work to generate future ones.
But showing can be a lot more effective than telling. So to that end, we scoured the internet for great health and wellness campaign examples. Here are a few we liked—and why they hit the mark.
There’s so much to like about Emerson Hospital’s community health program Vaping: What You Need to Know. Let’s start with the fact that it truly is targeted at the community. Emerson did a youth risk-behavior survey and found that vaping is the “drug of choice” for local middle and high school students. To address the problem, they developed (with the help of one of their own emergency room doctors, herself the parent of an area teen) a straightforward, easily digested wellness campaign sharing some of the health risks associated with vaping.
Don’t underestimate the value of a good wellness campaign slogan. After all, the first step to getting the public to interact with your wellness program is to grab their attention. St. Peter’s Health Partners’ smoking-cessation campaign named The Butt Stops Here does just that. Ditto for Boulder Community Health’s Birth Mojo childbirth education. A little clever wordplay can be all it takes to pique someone’s interest enough to get them to check out—and hopefully sign up for—your wellness program.
Partner up if you can. The University of Chicago’s Healing Hurt People-Chicago is a collaborative wellness program between the University of Chicago’s Comer Children’s Hospital and the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice at Drexel University in Philadelphia. The program helps violently injured kids heal both physically and emotionally. We love that this health and wellness campaign does exactly what it sets out to do—heal hurt people. And it heals using some innovative methods, including inviting participants to take part in Project Fire, a glassblowing and trauma-recovery program.
Wellness campaigns involving regular physical activity abound. It’s a boon to anyone who wants to get healthier by getting more fit. But how about a community wellness program guided by a health care provider that utilizes America’s vast trail network? That’s the premise behind Prescribe-a-Trail, an hour-or-so long walk led by doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists and other health care workers who discuss a health topic while you walk together! Baylor Scott & White Health offers a similar program called Walk with a Doc.
Employees who receive wellness benefits are generally healthier, happier and more productive. In addition, they have better morale and lower absenteeism. And when a health care system can bring employee wellness right to a person’s office, as Elliott Health does with their Worksite Wellness campaign, it’s a win-win. Thanks to the program’s health education and screening services, employees get to enjoy better health, and Elliott Health gets to promote itself to an engaged audience they may have otherwise missed. Cedars-Sinai is another health system that brings a wellness campaign right to where it’s needed most. Their Coach for Kids, a mobile medical unit that heads into disadvantaged Los Angeles neighborhoods, offers kids free preventive and primary medical care.
The pandemic changed all our lives in myriad ways, but one of the biggest things it did was make us all feel more isolated and alone. Enter Allina Health’s Hello4Health. This initiative “offers online resources and activities to help adults improve their social connections and mental wellness while building community resiliency,” says the health system’s website. Hello4Health was developed in response to a community needs assessment that identified social isolation as a risk factor to poor mental health among adults. This community wellness program gives people conversation starters, ways to connect through sports, tips for throwing a neighborhood party, and more tools to stay socially connected.
Sharp Health’s Think First—Use Your Mind to Protect Your Body program, uses the expertise of specialized health care workers and individuals who have undergone life-altering brain and spinal cord injuries to encourage people to make safer, smarter choices to prevent disastrous injuries. We really like how this health and wellness campaign uses real people to tell real stories, giving the information hard-to-dismiss authenticity.
Health care systems aren’t just in the business of getting people healthy. They’re also in the business of keeping people healthy. That’s where wellness programs—from breastfeeding to bereavement support, blood pressure to cancer screenings, weight loss to stress reduction classes—come into play. Creating strong, engaging and relevant wellness programs makes for a stronger, healthier community and, by default, a more effective and trusted health care system.
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Donna Christiano Campisano
The original version of this page was published at: https://www.writergirl.com/hospital-wellness-campaigns/
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