Increasing Staff Awareness of Media Efforts: Improving Internal Awareness of Public Health Media Outreach to Internal Customers
Summary
The Green River District Health Department (GRDHD) planned a process to implement improved methods to coordinate its community educational efforts with various media outlets. Processes were put in place to then communicate those efforts with GRDHD employees so that they would be aware of what was being communicated in the community regarding public health issues. This project was initiated because it was discovered that employees were unaware of the many efforts undertaken by the entire department to outreach through public media sources. It was discovered that there were several reasons why staff were unaware of education being done in the community. They included: (1) no assigned responsibility to share efforts with staff; (2) not an organizational priority; (3) staff involved with media outreach were not directed to share activities; (4) not using all available resources to disseminate information. The improvement efforts included creation of a media archive page on the agency’s website, sending out weekly e-mails to staff highlighting media activities for the coming week, and requested consideration for publication from all nine newspapers throughout the seven-county service area. A pre-test survey with questions relating to staff awareness of media activities was conducted with all employees. Following implementation of the quality improvement (QI) efforts, staff were again surveyed utilizing the same questions to determine if there had been an improvement in the awareness of the department’s media efforts. The three indicators tracked through the study all showed an improvement in staff awareness. The department also tracked the number of “hits” to the media archive page on the agency’s webpage. There was a steady increase in the number of people accessing this information as well. The department formally assigned responsibility for these efforts to the health Education Director and created a flow chart that incorporated the dissemination of education information to staff on weekly basis.
Gilmore, J. Public Health Quality Improvement Exchange. Increasing Staff Awareness of Media Efforts: Improving Internal Awareness of Public Health Media Outreach to Internal Customers . Thu, 12/27/2012 - 12:32. Available at http://www.phqix.org/content/increasing-staff-awareness-media-efforts-improving-internal-awareness-public-health-media. Accessed April 19, 2024.
Comments
Media Strategy
Thanks for sharing this effort. I would like to learn more and have a few questions for you: 1. Why was the lack of staff knowledge about media efforts perceived as a problem? 2. Have you seen any improvements as a result of increased awareness among staff? 3. Do you have any information you can share at this point about as a result of your process to implement improved methods to coordinate its community educational efforts with various media outlets, or about your future plans to focus on external customers? I look forward to learning more about your efforts!