Tuesday, August 24, 2021 4:00 - 5:30 PM (EDT)

TOPIC DESCRIPTION & OVERVIEW

This 90-minute session will focus on lessons learned and strategies created during the first two years of involving and incorporating feedback from local community coalitions on the designing, implementing, and evaluation of the health communication campaigns for the HEALing Communities Studies of Kentucky, Ohio, New York, and Massachusetts. The HCS is a multi-site, multi-faceted study designed to reduce opioid overdose deaths. The health communication strategy for the HCS focuses on developing and implementing community-based health communication campaigns for reducing stigma surrounding opioid use disorder, promoting medications for opioid use disorder, and to support the overall study’s primary goal of reducing opioid overdose deaths. Panel members will include the responsible parties of the health communication efforts of the four HCS sites as well as representatives from the coalitions from each of the sites to discuss what has been learned during these partnerships and how the challenges of working with a diverse group of communities at each site has impacted overall campaign strategies. Each panel will include a Q&A at the end of the panel as well as interaction with presenters (including coalition members) and the audience before, during, and after the presentations.

The HCS-KY Communications team will be joined by two community representatives from one of the Wave 1 rural communities. Discussion will include best uses for limited resources in small communities with a focus on turning limitations into advantages, easily finding community leaders to record PSAs, printing vinyl banners instead of purchasing billboards, and creating coffee cups for youth baseball games. These and other examples will be used to highlight these types of engagement and practicality of implementation.

The HCS-NY Communications team will be joined by the Communication Champion from Cayuga County, NY (Wave 1 rural community) to discuss leveraging data and collaboration strategies to maximize limited resources in small communities and still implement effective, community-informed communication campaigns. Targeted media plans using “hot spot” opioid overdose data, leveraging community partnerships, and creative paid and unpaid dissemination strategies to reach diverse, priority target audiences will be discussed.

The HCS-OH Communications team will be joined by the Lucas County’s Community Engagement Facilitator and the Media Champion for the Lucas County Opiate Coalition to discuss how their coalition was able to recruit, film, produce and distribute a series of short videos at little to no cost. The team will also highlight the importance of developing and sustaining relationships with key community members, including some with media contacts within the coalition, which was an essential ingredient in achieving this success in Lucas County.

The HCS-MA Communications team will be joined by representatives of the Holyoke community team and communications champion to discuss the importance of cultivating and leveraging relationships to increase awareness and reach of communication campaigns. The team will highlight how relationships among Holyoke’s coalition, community team members, their communication champion, and implementing organizations have been instrumental to the success of implementing communication strategies. Also discussed will be how coalitions organized a community forum, “Together, We Can,” to seek the support of local organizations and residents in helping to reduce opioid overdose deaths in their community.