KMP TASK 1: SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN

KMP TASK 1: SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN

Social Media Campaign

B. Problem Description

My topic is prevention of overweight and obesity through healthy nutrition and physical activity. Tulare County, by land mass, is one of the biggest counties in California. The County is situated in Central Valley which is halfway between LA and San Francisco along the Highway 99. Highway 99 is among the vital trucking routes on the West Coast. Tulare is home to 8 integrated cities and 71 disintegrated communities making a total population size of 442, 179. Tulare has total area coverage of 4,839 square miles. It is mostly rural in nature. (U.S. Census Bureau., & U.S. Census Bureau,2007). Approximately half of this land mass is made up of public lands, like the Giant Sequoia National Monument, Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park, and Sierra National Forest. The median age of Tulare County residents is only 28.5 years old. This makes it among the youngest populations in California region. (Villarejo, D., McCurdy et al., 2010). Majority of rural groups need to be considered prime development regions for agricultural and commercial services.

CI. Health Inequality/Disparity

            The African-American community in Tulare County experiences inequality as a result of various reasons. The reasons range from income, cultural, and  language. Main causes are integrated into minority status and entails more exposure to variety of lifestyle elements which adversely affect their wellbeing, lack or inadequate access to health services, high occupational hazards, and exposure to harsh environmental conditions. (DeBow & Syer, 2015). Health disparities among the African-American community can be analyzed on the basis of exposure to dangerous diseases such as cancer of the stomach and liver, liver and kidney diseases, and diabetes. The African-American community is a vital group to study due to its tremendous growth as far as the American population is concerned. By the year 2050, it is estimated that the group will have grown by 29% from the current 12.1%.

We cannot ignore health care issues which this community is facing now. Comprehensive understanding of the health concerns faced by this community will help to find a formidable solution as we proceed forward. Currently, the population size among the African-American community in Tulare is standing at 2.96%. The rate of diabetes among this group is at 50%, a higher rate compared to other communities such as American Indians who are at 38%. (U.S. Census Bureau., & U.S. Census Bureau,2007). Almost 25% of this group in Tulare County lives below the poverty line.

C2. Primary Community and Prevention Resources

            At the moment Tulare County uses various programs to enhance health. There are a number of after-school programs that keep children active and ensure they don’t get into trouble. The county has formulated plans which include everything ranging from alcohol and drug prevention to the empowerment of the youths and talent development programs. These programs provide a ground for the youths and children to showcase their skills and lead a purposeful life. Some of the programs provided by the County include Spring Camp, Summer Camp, and Summer Neighborhood Drop-in among others. The objective of these programs is to keep children, adolescents, and young adults busy during the breaks. In these programs, children, adolescents and young adults engage in various activities such art, nature, sports, games, drama, and crafts. These programs help to reduce the prevalence of obesity and overweight among the communities by encouraging healthy eating and engaging in physical exercises.

C3. Underlying Causes

            As highlighted before, majority of the African-American s living in Tulare County live below the poverty line. Majority of them survive with meager income. The core expense to them is housing. (Lessard, Alcala, & Capitman, 2016).To them, food is the last priority and the direction they take in most cases is towards sugary drinks and cheap processed foods. There key concern is filling their stomach even if it means high calorie foods such as tamales and tacos. These high-calorie foods have been found to be the key contributor to lifestyles diseases such as obesity. Studies have revealed that African-American have higher propensity and prevalence of obesity. Lack of access to health care and groceries as a result of longer distances is also another contributor to the present problems experienced by this group. Most of them live in rural areas and accessing facilities such as healthcare is a problem. (Lessard, Alcala, & Capitman, 2016).Outside Tulare town, it is difficult to find a grocery opened in a busy day. This leaves them with corner stores as the choice. These corner stores usually don’t stock a variety of products.

            With lack of accessibility to health care and income disparity, we expect the problem to continue. Health of the population of any population is important as far the economy of that particular region is concerned. When a section of the population is sick, we expect the rate of economic growth to reduce. This is because a section of the labor is inactive hence less gross production. Having sick population means that quite amount of resources will be channeled towards healthcare at the expense of development projects which will boost the economy. Therefore, there is need to ensure that address the problem of obesity and overweight among this community. Factors which require to be addressed include increasing the accessibility of health services to rural communities, reviewing the incomes to ensure that there is equality, and educating individuals on how to stay healthy.

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D. Evidence-Based Practice

Nowadays sending the message across to the young generation is a bit hectic. Several studies have been conducted to assess on the ways to engage the youths especially those from low socio-economic status. A study conducted by Albritton, Huffman and McClellan (2017) to study the perceptions of the rural principals and discussion of whether obesity prevention programs are important. One of the hypotheses wanted to find out whether schools were ideal site for the program. Regarding this hypothesis, the study found out that indeed schools could be the ideal place for discussing about ways of preventing obesity. Schools were better sites because children spent most of their time in schools. The second hypothesis wanted to find out whether principals had a feeling that the issue of obesity was emanating from homes to schools. The research found out that the problem of obesity originated from home and spread to school. The solution suggested for this case was to include family members and parents in the prevention program.

Third hypothesis wanted to find out the possible barriers which the principals faced during the implementation of the obesity prevention program. Based on the ideals of the program, the study found out the food provided to the children during school hours had an adverse effect on the health of the students. A good number of the students threw the healthy food given to them and went back queue to buy snacks. By this period, schools had been instructed to come up with a diet menu as part of the efforts to promote health. The study concluded that with an obesity prevention program, there would be creation of healthy eating habits among the children. The effect of peer influence and its effect on the engagement in physical activity were not also left out. It was found out that adolescents engaged in physical activities more when they are with their peers compared to their family members. There is need to adopt this program for effective obesity prevention.

            A study was conducted by Muturi et al., (2017) to evaluate on how best the youths from low socio-economic status can be engaged. School-going children were provided with questionnaire which required them to provide information on the best way they feel they should be engaged to make right food choices and improve their physical activities. The study revealed that children possess great motivation for wellbeing. The research also revealed that availability of services increased the children’s motivation of being more active. Peers also occupied a fundamental part as far children’s engagement in physical activity was concerned. Influence from peers resulted in the increase of need to be more active. The study further found out that availability of varieties of healthy foods alternatives also increased the chances of making the right food choices among the children. (Muturi et al., 2017).       

E1. Social Media Campaign Objective

            The key issue in Tulare County is lack of availability of food alternatives in the groceries and local markets. This inadequacy of food varieties has been contributed by high prices. One of the ways to ensure there is availability of food choices in the groceries is through incentives. Providing incentives to businesses engaging in groceries, there will be general increase in food varieties. With a variety of foods, we expect to see an improvement in nutrition and health in the county.  With the target population being the African-American children, adolescents, and young adults and understanding that their population rate is increasing, there is need to combine the two to come up with a better solution.

 Offering incentives on companies and individuals selling vegetables and fruits will facilitate the efforts to promote healthy living. For this objective to be achieved, there is need to increase taxes on high calorie foods to discourage consumption and encourage consumption of vegetables and fruits because they will be cost-effective. My social campaign objective is to formulate an incentive program which will run for the next four years with goal of reducing the rates of obesity and overweight among the African-American children, adolescents, and young adults in Tulare County by 4%.

E2. Social Marketing Interventions

            The first social marketing intervention I will employ will be the creation of a black and white flyer which will be printed on every month and produced during classroom attendance in every school in the County. The flyer will give information which will connect all the schools in the County and show the rate of participation of every school along with free local advertising for all stores and markets listed in the incentive plan. The second intervention I will employ will the formulation of a healthy eating plan card for the target population. After the formulation, I will seek acceptance from all the schools in the County. This plan will be made up of the information concerning all the local markets and grocery stores found in the County together with the discounts and offers given in a particular period. Apart from containing the information, the card will also have the second use. It will be used during the purchase whereby once a child or an adolescent has purchased an item from the listed groceries, the card will be punched. If punched throughout the week, the bearer will be entitled to one fruit of their choice.

            The third social media intervention will be the creation of a Facebook page where the members of the target population will be able to share knowledge and get updates concerning the objective of the study. 

E3. Social Media Platforms

            Majority of the target population in the Tulare County are Facebook users. I will take advantage of this social media platform to come up with a Facebook page. The page will be used to give updates regarding the study. Also, it will serve as a platform where members will comment on their experience about the study and share knowledge among themselves on how effectively achieve the objective. The flyers and the healthy eating plan card will be embedded in the page. This will help to ensure that every member gets access to them regardless of their location within the County. This will also save us on distribution expenses. All the members will be required to do is download the copy and fill it.

E3a. Benefits of Social Media Platforms

             Using Facebook page as a social media platform will go a long away in complementing my efforts to promote healthy lifestyle in Tulare County. With this platform, I will be able to reach a considerable number of target population going as per the fact that a large if not all are heavy user of this platform. Through Facebook page, I will be able to increase the exposure to the target population. In addition to increasing the exposure, this platform will also collect more leads and decrease various expenses such as distribution and printing of flyers and cards.  Reaching a large number of target population means that my message and objective of health promotion will be achieved.

F. Benefits of My Health Message to Target population

            With information contained in the Facebook page, flyers, digital bulletin, and weekly punch on the card will help to create a feeling of community among the young adults, adolescents, and children of the County. Various studies including those highlighted in my evidence-based research have revealed that young adults, children, and adolescents are most likely to accept a program if it has been recommended or used by their peers. (Albritton, Huffman and McClellan, 2017). This brings in the idea of how peer pressure contributes to adoption of a particular behavior among the young adults. Peer pressure will compel majority of the students to adopt good eating habits. Limiting the message to schools will enable me to create a sense of teamwork. Every school will struggle to promote health within them and this will form some kind of competition between schools. Every school will be struggling to outdo the other.

G. Best Practices for Social Media

            The decision of whether social media campaign is effective or not depend on three key elements. These elements include the ability to define the target population, ability to be consistent in the campaign, and ability to engage and interact. (Cheng, 2009).This therefore means that one of the best approaches to the implementation of the social media tool is the definition of the population we want to reach out to. In my case, the type or target population will be the African-American children, adolescents, and Young adults studying in Tulare County. The second approach is the consistency of the campaign. In my campaign, I plan to have a systematic design across all the schools in the County. The punch cards containing all the information regarding all the local stores and groceries will be distributed to provide the target population an opportunity to select various varieties of foods.

 In addition to the punch card we will also have a review segment which will be synthesized in the digital bulletin. This monthly digital segments will act a platform through which schools will be providing their progress concerning health promotion. This way, we will be able to evaluate the progress of every school in the county in its effort to achieve the objective of lowering obesity and overweight by 4%. The results and the progress of every school will be discussed at the end of month during the review. The third best practice will be engagement and interaction. Throughout the exercise there will be engagement. Students will be filling the punch cards. The information filled will be reviewed at the end of the month. Reviewing the information together students and the school in generation will create an engagement between the students and teachers.

Rewarding the students who would have achieved weekly target with a fruit is also another way of engaging and interacting with them. Appreciating their efforts with rewards will help to improve efforts towards the attainment of the objective.

H1. Stakeholder Roles and Responsibilities

            For my case, the stakeholders will include County project manager whose role will be regulating the incentive plan for the owners of the local stores and groceries. Second stakeholder will be the owners of the local groceries and stores and the third stakeholder will be the individual schools in the County. As part of the regulation of the incentive plan, the County project manager will be coordinating the funds meant for the program to ensure that they reach the right people. They will also move around the County to seek individuals interested with the incentive. Owners of the local stores and groceries will promote their products within their locality. They will also offer guidance regarding on food choices. Schools on the other hand will oversee the dissemination of the monthly digital bulletin and ensure that youths get access to it.

H2. Potential Partnerships

            Owners of the local stores and grocers will be the key partners in this program. Other will include farmers and producers in the County. Integrating owners and farmers will help to create productive relationship which will ensure steady supply and variety of fruits.

H3. Implementation Timeline

            Owners of the local stores and groceries, farmers, and producers will be interviewed from spring of 2018. Then, I will spend 3 months to create a program which will be executed prior to start of fall in 2019.

H4. Evaluation

            Once the program has kicked off, its effectiveness will be evaluated on a monthly basis. Data collected from all the schools will be compiled in a single repository for analysis. Questionnaires will be distributed on quarterly basis to all the schools in the County. These questionnaires will be focusing on areas concerning the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables within the locality.

H4a. Measurable Tools

            The success or failure of the project will be determined by the trend exhibited during the period of study after comparing the months. Data on every month will be analyzed and from there we shall create form a graph to see the progress. Trend enables us to create pattern which reveals whether there is progress or not. (Chandler & Scott, 2011).

H5. Cost of Implementation

            Expenses related to this project include salary of County project manager whose role will be putting together the plan during the three months. Others will include onsite visits with schools, farmers and grocers. I expect the cost to reduce once the program has kicked off since there will be less visits.

Reflection on Social Media

            Nursing was considered one of the professions which did not allow full usage of social media. Nevertheless, with tremendous increase of social media usage, many healthcare organization have nowadays have incorporated social media in their policies. Its usage in healthcare has had a significant contribution especially in efforts to promote safe, quick, and quality care. Big health organizations such as World Health Organization have Tweeter and Facebook pages whose sole purpose is to inform people on health issues such as outbreaks and disasters and feedbacks from the public. The same way, through Facebook Page as media platform which incorporates other components (flyers and cards) of my message, I will be able to reach a large number of target populations more easily. I will be able to share my health promotion message knowing that it has reached a large number of recipients at a low cost.

Reflection on Future Nursing Practice

            Social media campaigns can be applied in management of health issues and promotion of health among the youths. This campaign will help me to understand ways to formulate a social media campaign, how to engage with stakeholders, how to identify the target population, and the expenses related to the campaign. I have gained a lot of knowledge especially on how to relate with stakeholders and budget for such campaigns.

KMP TASK 1: SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN