First published on June 1, 2015 in observance of the COPH’s 30^th anniversary celebration.

Dr. Carol Bryant was on the ground floor of the USF College of Public Health’s social marketing program when the social marketing field was in its infancy.  She credits Dr. Stan Graven, chair of the Department of Community and Family Health at the time, for the idea of a social marketing conference.

“He asked me to start a conference,” Bryant said.  “He said, ‘I think the field of social marketing has enough popularity and potential.  We need a conference on it.’”

Dr. Carol Bryant

Bryant, now USF Distinguished Health Professor in Community and Family Health, believes Graven’s own conference had convinced him of the viability of conferences in general, and specifically their ability to facilitate broad networking among stakeholders in any given field.

“It’s had a really major impact on his field,” Bryant said of what has become known as the Gravens conference, “so he could see that a conference in social marketing might be able to do the same thing.  He realized that a national conference could bring people together, disseminate the ideas, make a significant contribution to the public health community, and probably be good for branding USF.”

Bryant assented despite never having done anything of the kind or having any real idea of how to go about it.

She enlisted the help of Judy Sommers, who was at that time in charge of organizing COPH events.  She traveled to the nation’s capital to consult with two people at CDC who were well known in social marketing to ask whom to invite to speak.  She even began to think that putting a conference together might not be so difficult, after all.

“We had a really dynamic lineup of all the really active social marketers in the United States,” she said.  “We paid them all for their travel and a pretty good honorarium to come.  We promoted the conference, and we had 71 people.”

So far, so good.  There was just one problem.

“Forty or 50 of them were speakers,” she recalled, “so we lost a bundle of money.”

Bryant concluded then that the inaugural social marketing conference would also be the last, but she had a believer in Graven.

“Stan had the vision and courage to say, ‘Nope, we’re going to do it again.  Only this time, we’re not going to lose money, so let’s see how we can cut back on the budget and do better promotion.’”

Flanked by a cadre of congratulatory colleagues, Bryant (center) received a special recognition they presented her at the 2014 Social Marketing Conference.

The result was a second conference that turned the tide.  Smaller honoraria and fewer speakers fixed the early financial faux pas, along with the discovery within a few years that the honoraria could be dropped altogether.  There was enough interest in social marketing and enough respect for the conference that speakers would pay their own way to take part, and holding it at a beachfront resort didn’t hurt.

“Stan was absolutely right,” Bryant said.  “The conference would take the approach of social marketing and disseminate it in a way we couldn’t just through publications and my flying around and talking about it.”

Still, she said, social marketing’s early days at USF were lean at best.

“The early days were real tough financially,” she said.  “I was pretty terrified, actually, about how to do something like this.  Fortunately, we had good people – first Judy Sommers and then Ginger Phillips, and now Bobbi Rose – to do all the conference planning, but I didn’t realize I could just sit back and let them do that.  In the first years, I felt like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I have to learn how to do this.’”

In those early years, the Social Marketing Conference, the first of its kind anywhere, was pretty much the extent of social marketing, said Bryant, who also co-directs the Florida Prevention Research Center, a CDC-funded entity that develops and evaluates a community-based approach to social marketing.

“We did not have what we came to call the training academy yet, or the field school,” she said.  “I think I was teaching an Introduction to Social Marketing course at that time.”

Persistence pays

Bryant’s long-time social marketing partner is also her long-time partner in the bigger sense, her husband, James Lindenberger, director and faculty administrator of the Social Marketing Group.  When social marketing was launched at COPH, Lindenberger was not yet at USF, but was nonetheless a major catalyst in the start of social marketing at the university.  Together, he and Bryant founded Best Start Social Marketing, a nonprofit marketing agency with an innately symbiotic relationship with social marketing at USF.  Lindenberger was its executive director for its first 15 years.  He also is founder and former publisher of Social Marketing Quarterly, the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to social marketing.

James Lindenberger

“Much of the work that we did, whether at our agency or at USF, was really done collaboratively between the two,” Lindenberger recalled.  While agreeing that the Social Marketing Conference drove at least the USF entry into the field, and probably more, he shared Bryant’s recollection of a shaky start.

“It was the first conference we’d ever put on,” he said.  “We didn’t know what we were doing, exactly, but we did have a lot of people who were instrumental in the field of social marketing, which was still a very young discipline.  We had a lot of what we thought were the important folks in the field do the presentations.”

One of those people, Lindenberger said, was Alan Andreasen, now a marketing professor at Georgetown University and executive director of the Social Marketing Institute.

“We asked him to be the closing speaker and add an exclamation point to the conference,” Lindenberger said.  “So, after a day-and-a-half of presentations, Alan got up and said, ‘Well, I want to tell you all that none of you know what social marketing is.  You’re completely wrong.’  He then proceeded to spend about 35 or 40 minutes telling us how much we had messed up.”

Lindenberger and Bryant at the recent COPH Alumni Awards

Bryant and Lindenberger laughed heartily as they recalled the incident, but said they were far from finding it amusing at the time.

“We were furious.  You left the room,” Lindenberger said, nodding to Bryant, who agreed.

“I got up,” she said, “and was just pacing in the hallway thinking, ‘I can’t take this.’”

“We were really furious,” Lindenberger continued, “because this is a guy who was really important, and a lot of people looked to him, and we wanted him to come in and say, ‘Bless you.  Thank you for doing this.  Nobody else has done it before.  We appreciate it.’  Instead, he got up and basically said, ‘You idiots.’

“After a few weeks of us getting through this, it dawned on us that he was right.  His concern was that we had had almost all communications presentations.  Almost everything we talked about was promotion.  He said, ‘That’s not what we’re about.  We aren’t advertisers, we’re marketers, and marketers do a complete and holistic look at solving problems and apply those different variables to the solutions.’”

What resulted, Lindenberger said, was a dramatic redesign of the conference for the following year.

Holding a conference at a seaside resort is a good thing, as the faces of Social Marketing Conference attendees show.

“It’s been interesting,” Bryant noted.  “That mistake was made by almost everyone we invited.  They showed off all their promotional materials and were very proud to do so, and we still have trouble with trying to make sure people don’t do that, and that our audience understands that it isn’t just advertising.

“It’s very humbling that people can sit there for two days having us tell them that maybe 20 times and still try to hire us to do TV ads.  I think it’s because most people think marketing is advertising.  It’s a hard misunderstanding to correct.”

In fact, both said the term “social marketing” has long been problematic.  Technology, it might seem, is doing all it can to keep it that way.

“It’s interesting,” Bryant said.  “It’s changed from ‘Don’t call it that, because marketing is evil’ or ‘Don’t call it social marketing, because that’s social engineering.’  Now, it’s a different debate.”

“A lot of the debate,” Lindenberger said, “seems to be rooted in younger folks coming into the field who do want to be social marketers, but when they present themselves as social marketers to their peers, their bosses or their clients, those people misinterpret that to mean social media and social media marketing.  Their concern is that it’s diminishing their ability to have an impact and also diminishing their ability to have a successful career.”

“For many of us who are kind of the old guard on this,” he continued, “our belief is there’s just so much brand equity built into it.  There’s a huge array of publications and organizations and conferences that are built around social marketing.  We would have another 30 years of building the brand up.”

“But we already have lost a lot of brand equity,” Bryant countered.  “If you Google ‘social marketing,’ you’ll get social media, even social media marketing conferences.  It is a real problem.

“In the U.S. public health system, and certainly within anthropology, it was seen as advertising and manipulation,” added Bryant, an anthropologist by training.  “I had anthropology friends who just thought I had gone totally to the dark side, but public health had a real misunderstanding about it, too, until people like Marsha Walker in Texas got it right and funded a really successful program.  That program was so successful that soon, the other agencies were asking us to do projects for them.  So, as they saw it work in this country, people in public health went, ‘Wait a minute.  Whatever it’s called, this might work for us.”

“I think what happened here at USF is a very significant part of why the discipline grew as rapidly and as successfully as it did,” Lindenberger said.  “A national program that we did out of USF and Best Start was the national breastfeeding promotion campaign for the Department of Agriculture.  That became their national brand.  It’s been used in every state in the country, is still being used, and that really brought social marketing to the foreground in Washington in a way domestically that it had never been before.”

Throw me a line

That early show of strength by the program also was a very early sign of things to come for the field, “upstream” social marketing, an approach that wouldn’t have a name for many years.

“Downstream is basically going to the individual or small group to influence their behaviors to be more positive in a particular issue, health issue or whatever it may be,” Lindenberger explained.  “Upstream is trying to look at the environment, decision-makers and the other factors that actually create a situation in which people can make change more effectively and more usefully.”

“All these people are drowning in the river downstream,” Bryant offered by way of the prevailing example in the field.  “So, you throw them educational pamphlets on how to swim or pull them out one at a time.  But upstream says, ‘No, let’s find out where they’re coming from.  Is there a bridge that’s broken?  Is something giving way?  Let’s go up there and keep them getting into the river in the beginning, instead of one by one educating them on how to survive.’  It’s a powerful metaphor, and it is catching on.”

Lindenberger noted that early applications of upstream social marketing significantly predate the metaphor.  While the national breastfeeding campaign was being developed in 1989, he said, Bryant and a pair of colleagues went to Capitol Hill and lobbied Congress for funding.

Social marketing at work at the Social Marketing Conference

“It had never been done before,” Lindenberger said, “and after that lobbying effort, $8-million was set aside specifically for breastfeeding promotion and management to be dispersed throughout the country in the WIC program.  That was upstream.  The very first project we ever did was as upstream as it gets.”

Bryant credits Andreasen for helping to widely disseminate the metaphoric term – source unknown – that has become a directional imperative for social marketing over the past decade, as well as numerous others for driving it forward.

“Many speakers at our conference, Bill Smith and Gerard Hastings from Scotland, especially, brought that metaphor alive for us and nudged us to go more upstream,” Bryant said, “and then our critics like Larry Wallach were saying the same thing,” which was that the downstream approach was blaming the victims, chiding them for not knowing how to swim well enough to save themselves.

“All those forces came together at the same time, and public health had the same realization.  We said, ‘Wait a minute.  We’d be really stupid to keep going downstream.  Let’s come up with a model that takes social marketing upstream,’ so that’s what we’ve done for the last 10 years – develop the model and test it out, and now, we’re training people in it.

“I’m hoping it will really take off.  It is more difficult to get funding, but it is more sustainable, too.”

This year, social marketing at USF COPH added to its impressive list of accolades the nation’s first MPH with a social marketing concentration.  Last year, the program celebrated the revision and re-launch of its social marketing training web site in conjunction with the Florida Prevention Research Center.  There is excitement over the field’s burgeoning relationships with other disciplines, namely engineering (humanitarian engineers) and a long-standing but still growing symbiosis with anthropology.  There also is that strengthening upstream trend.

Which way do we go?

But with all its successes, expansion, diversification and partnering, social marketing nonetheless remains a relatively new field in a time when a digital communications explosion can threaten to turn almost anything into a shape-shifter.  While few would argue that 44 successful years likely points toward anything less than a positive future, identifying potential threats can hardly be seen as unwise.

So, just where is social marketing headed?  In arguably its adolescence, what will it look like fully grown?  Who better to ask than two people who have nurtured it from infancy?

“I see a lot of dangers ahead,” Bryant said, “the big one being the brand equity diminishing because of confusion with social media marketing, and I’m not sure where I stand on the argument.  But I’m at this point kind of leaning toward maybe we do change our name, or do a qualification to it, ‘social marketing for behavior change,’ or something like that to help clarify that we’re not social media.

“Like anything, it peaks and then it falls,” she said, “and I resisted doing an MPH in social marketing, because I was afraid it was just an approach and its popularity might wane, and people with that degree – other people wouldn’t even know what they did.  I think those are some dangers that are real, but there are now so many people active in the field around the world.  We have two list serves, two journals, two conferences, and we’re thousands strong instead of just a hundred, so I think those fears are probably not warranted.”

“I agree with that,” Lindenberger offered.  “They’re not warranted.  We differ over the name issue and social media marketing.  I’m fairly comfortable with the fact that people sometimes get confused, and we can help them learn more about it if we have the chance to engage them.  And I also don’t really care.  I think we and other social marketers continue to do what we do, and if we do it well, if we produce the product successfully and deliver something to their audiences that they really need and want that will help them accomplish their own missions, then we’re fine.”

After discussing the future they anticipate for social marketing, it was time to consider the one they’d like to see.

A student poster presentation at the conference

“Something I think will happen – we’re already seeing it – that I would like more of is social marketing moving out of public health,” Bryant said.  “I think our conference taught people in public health how to apply social marketing.  Only more recently have we attracted people from other fields and changed our name from Social Marketing in Public Health to just Social Marketing Conference.

“It since then has also taken off in environmental protection.  A man named Doug McKenzie Moore, who’s a good trainer and has a wonderful web site and a list serve, has really spread it around the world for people who are working in recycling and all kinds of things.  We’re working with Qatar now to do the same thing in transportation.  Some social marketers want to see it in finance helping people to manage their finances better.

“So, what I’m hoping happens is it really does move out of just public health applications, because it could work so well in other arenas.  Healthy People 2020 has a set of objectives related to social marketing, and they want to see, by 2020, more health departments using social marketing.  I’d like to see state health departments really use it.  And the other set of objectives in Healthy People 2020 is that all schools of public health will offer at least a course in social marketing.”

“I’d like to see it be a degree program in a lot of universities around the country,” Lindenberger said.  “I think that would be a way for this to really take off – that people see it as a legitimate credential that helps them get jobs and provides them with tools to be able to influence positive change.”

Story by David Brothers, College of Public Health.

The post Pioneers of social marketing discuss its founding and its future appeared first on College of Public Health News.

His public health practice is food safety. His public health passion is protecting people.

It was his undergraduate studies in microbiology that first sparked an interest in food safety for USF COPH alumnus Frank Yiannas.

“I really enjoyed learning about this invisible world that exists around us,” said Yiannas, who graduated the COPH in 2003 with an MPH degree. “I was interested in this idea that there are things we can’t see that can do us harm.”

Yiannas, a first-generation American who was born in New York City but primarily raised in Orlando, started his undergraduate life at USF but later transferred to the University of Central Florida, where he received his bachelor of science in microbiology.

Frank Yiannas, MPH. (Photo courtesy of Yiannas)

After a couple of roles in product safety at a small pharmaceutical company and later a cosmetic manufacturer, Yiannas landed at Walt Disney World, where he was director of safety and health.

“I was responsible for overseeing all food safety and public health matters for the largest vacation destination in the world,” explained Yiannas. “While I was at Disney, I became interested in the topic of epidemiology—understanding probability, developing a hypothesis and getting evidence-based results. And every time I looked at how I could do my job better, it seemed like all roads pointed to a degree in public health.”

Yiannas chose the USF COPH because of its outstanding national reputation.

“I’m a scientist, so I did my research,” said Yiannas, who did most of his coursework online. “USF kept coming up high on the list. And I had had some undergraduate experience there, so it was an easy choice. If I had to do anything over, the only thing I might do differently is get my MPH sooner.”

Taking a course in social marketing taught by now-retired Distinguished University Health Professor Dr. Carol Bryant was “career-changing,” commented Yiannas.

“You can’t achieve food safety by compliance alone,” Yiannas noted. “You need to understand the principles of human behavior and organizational culture. That class was the most influential of my career. Lessons and principles I learned then I still apply today.”

In 2008 Yiannas left Disney to become vice president of food safety and health for Walmart stores, Sam’s Clubs and Walmart International.

“I went from the happiest place on earth to the busiest place on earth,” Yiannas laughed.

“At Walmart, we have thousands of different types of food products, 11,000 retail establishments, tens of thousands of food suppliers, 2 million associates worldwide and 240 million customers a week. Providing safe and affordable food is daunting,” he added.

Noting that Walmart is the world’s largest retailer, Yiannas says that if there has been a food-safety issue in this country in the recent past, Walmart has been involved—simply by virtue of the sheer volume of food it buys.

“My goal is not so much to react to an incidence in the food system, which we do, nonetheless, with both urgency and precision, but to create preventive interventions.”

Yiannas with chicken breast sold at Walmart. (Photo courtesy of Yiannas)

To that end, Yiannas is one of the most vocal and ardent supporters of blockchain technology, a new and emerging database often described as a distributed, tamper-proof and decentralized ledger that tracks transactions and allows for the traceability of food.

“With food traceability today, it’s one step up and one step back [where the food was sold and where it came from before it was sold],” Yiannas explained. “And a lot of these records are kept on paper. There’s no uniformity, and sometimes the records are incomplete. This can make tracing a food back to its source during an outbreak of something like salmonella or E. coli time consuming. In fact, it can take up to a week. But when you capture all the information on a blockchain, you can trace a product back to its source in 2.2 seconds. That’s good for all stakeholders in the food system.”

It’s this emphasis on blockchain technology, recently instituted at Walmart, that Yiannas says he most proud of.

“This will lead to greater responsibility and accountability,” explained Yiannas. “I think it will usher in a new era in food traceability and transparency. And transparency in public health is a good thing.”

In November, Yiannas headed to the Food and Drug Administration, taking on the role of deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine.

“The roles are similar, yet different,” said Yiannas. “The mission of food safety is the same, but instead of reporting to 240 million customers each week, I’ll be serving nearly 330 million Americans every day. What I love about my work is that it deals with more than food safety. It’s about improving quality of life.”

Alumni Fast Five
What did you dream of becoming when you were young?
I was convinced I would be a shortstop for the New York Yankees.

Where would we find you on the weekend?
At home or visiting family.

What is the last book you read?
“Ethereum,” by Ben Abner

What superpower would you like to have?
There are so many, but I would probably say the ability to be transported over geographic boundaries and time.

What is your all-time favorite movie?
“Gladiator.” I like the idea of standing up for freedom and what you believe in.

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

The post COPH alum Frank Yiannas accepts top food safety job at FDA appeared first on College of Public Health News.

Angela Makris, a December USF College of Public Health (COPH) grad who received her MPH with a concentration in social marketing, says that from the time she was a child, she knew she always wanted to help people.

And she hasn’t stopped since.

Born in Sydney, Australia, to Greek parents, Makris got her BA in communications from Australia’s Macquarie University and later earned a master’s in marketing management.

She started out her public health career in Australia, working as a marketing manager for a water association that advocated for sustainable drinking habits in Sydney. She followed that up with a series of jobs, the first working at an advertising agency promoting public health and behavior change issues, then a government agency that focused on preventing child abuse and getting kids into foster care. Curious about her heritage, she wound up in Greece, working in health communications and medication compliance.

Makris moved to Tampa in 2015 with her husband, who had a business here. She knew if she wanted to continue working in a public health capacity, she would have to learn how the American health care system works.

She decided to go back to school as a “mature student” and the USF COPH, she said, was an obvious choice.

“Even though I did my coursework online, one of the main reasons I chose USF was because it was local. When it comes to health care, every state has its own set of rules and funding issues,” Makris said. “I knew that if I was going to live and work in Florida, I’d have to learn how the Florida system operates.”

Another reason the USF COPH was a top pick was its social marketing program, led by Dr. Carol Bryant (now retired). “I had been following her work as a subscriber to the Social Marketing Quarterly for many years,” Makris said. “I was so excited to have her as a teacher.”

Makris, in fact, was the recipient of the inaugural Carol A. Bryant Social Marketing Scholarship for outstanding academic achievement and leadership within social marketing.

Angela Makris, MPH, stands with the poster she presented at this year’s European Social Marketing Conference, held in Belgium. “Having my poster accepted was recognition of all the work and effort that I have put into my degree and the support given to me by the COPH faculty,” the recent grad said. (Photo courtesy of Makris)

Even though there wasn’t a language barrier, Makris—who works at the COPH as a grad assistant in the Center of Excellence in Maternal and Child Health—does note that cultural differences did, at times, make her work challenging.

“In addition to some spelling differences [colour vs. color, recognise vs. recognize], which gave me problems when I was proofreading, Australia doesn’t really focus on race,” she explained. “We deal with people’s ethnic backgrounds. So a lot of my thinking is shaped this way, and it is in stark contrast to the very rigid race construct that exists here when looking at solving public health problems.”

Makris hopes to continue her public health education with a PhD from the USF COPH. “I want to continue my work in social marketing and research the health disparities of people with disabilities. Ultimately I’d like to develop public health curriculums that decrease stigma for people with disabilities, who are the largest minority group in the U.S. I want to help people treat others better and be better advocates for themselves and their health.”

Read more about Angela Makris’ public health journey and work here.

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

The post Bull from Down Under focuses on those who are disabled and medically underserved appeared first on College of Public Health News.

Using policy change to offer healthier food options is ‘Fun’

The Florida Prevention Research Center (FPRC) at USF College of Public Health has used social marketing to improve health and prevent disease for more than 20 years.

Under the guidance of Dr. Carol Bryant, professor emeritus, the FPRC worked with the Lexington, Ky. Tween and Nutrition Coalition to create the policy initiative ‘Better Bites: Snack Strong.’

Highly successful in Kentucky, the policy initiative resulted in healthy food offerings on menus at public pools, government cafeterias, school concessions, movie theaters, restaurants, summer camps and the Kentucky State Park system.

An example of the healthier food options that were available to students following the policy change. (Photo courtesy of Khaliq Pasha)

According to Dr. Mahmooda Khaliq Pasha, an assistant professor in the Department of Community and Family Health, success for the FPRC has resided in the creation of the community based prevention marketing (CBPM) framework, which combines social marketing, community wisdom and control along with public health advocacy to bring about sustainable change.

The second iteration of the CBPM framework focused on policy development and was designed to assist coalitions in selecting, tailoring, implementing and evaluating evidence based programs and policies that promote behavior change.

Posters created and used to indicate availability of healthier food. (Photo courtesy of Khaliq Pasha)

They decided to translate this same work in Florida’s Pinellas County.

“In Pinellas, an estimated 29 to 33.5 percent of preschool students are overweight or obese, as are one in three high school students,” Khaliq Pasha said.

According to Khaliq Pasha, the Healthy Pinellas Consortium (HPC), a Florida Department of Health community coalition, was tasked with addressing this public health problem and learned about the Tween’s Coalition work and success with Better Bites.

Wanting to replicate the effort in Florida, the HPC worked with Khaliq Pasha, who served as the training and technical assistance lead for the FPRC, to bring Better Bites to Florida.

“For the FPRC, our previous and ongoing research is focused on improving the CBPM framework so that it is used widely,” Khaliq Pasha said. “This work in Florida was quite important for us as it showed our ability to translate our work from one setting to another.”

Using the newly created CBPM for Policy Development training website, the HPC worked through the framework to arrive at the conclusion that part of the solution is to make nutritious choices easier for families managing after-school activities for their children.

“Recreational facilities and sporting events encourage physical activity and healthy living, yet, send a contradictory message by offering unhealthy snacks and limiting a person’s ability to make healthy choices,” Khaliq Pasha said.

With technical assistance from the FPRC, Tween’s Coalition, and nutritionists, the Fun Bites initiative was born.

The City of Largo was the first to use Fun Bites in its city concessions, followed closely by the City of St. Petersburg.

Areas implementing the Fun Bites initiative. (Photo courtesy of Khaliq Pasha)

Currently, Fun Bites has been implemented widely and has led to institutional policy change, with 13 locations now serving Fun Bites and city level policy change through the enactment of policies related to community event food offerings.

Parents and concession stand fundraisers were pleasantly surprised by Fun Bites.

“We wanted to offer healthy items, but we didn’t know if our sales would be affected. We were so pleasantly surprised that sales actually went up as families discovered that making the healthy choice was the easy choice at our concession stands,” one parent stated in a report of the program.

Other counties in Florida are quickly catching on, according to Khaliq Pasha, with Pasco County expanding the initiative and Hillsborough County discussing future plans.

“Our hope is that the improvements that we make to the framework based on this experience will help other coalitions in the future to achieve Better Bites and Fun Bites success,” Kahliq Pasha said.

Story by COPH staff writer

The post Policy change+ healthier food options = Fun appeared first on College of Public Health News.

From founding social marketing as a focus area at USF to spearheading a seminal program promoting breastfeeding among the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) clients, Dr. Carol Bryant has dedicated more than 30 years to a career focused on improving lives.

Bryant, Distinguished University Health Professor in the USF College of Public Health’s Department of Community and Family Health and former director of the Florida Prevention Research Center—a center she played a vital role in establishing—retired in August with emeritus professor status.

Dr. Carol Bryant. (Photo by Eric Younghans)

“It’s a little scary after working so hard for so long and being so focused on public health and service; it’s been hard to have a sense of purpose and feel fulfilled the same way I did when I was working,” Bryant said. “After you’ve had your nose to the grindstone and worked your butt off for 45 years, you have to take care of whatever remaining body parts you have!”

The Miami native studied applied anthropology at the University of Kentucky and then started working at the health department in Kentucky, working her way up from health educator to health education deputy commissioner over a span of twelve years.

In 1989 she joined the Department of Community and Family Health (CFH) as an assistant professor eventually becoming the founder of all things social marketing at the COPH.

She said she was first exposed to social marketing while volunteering in Ecuador with her husband and saw it as the key to creating action in public health.

“The basis of social marketing is understanding and respecting the people, the community’s values, their dreams, their fears, their day-to-day issues, and honoring them in a way that allows you to help them solve the problems they want to solve and get the life they want to have,” Bryant said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been implementing her breastfeeding program, “Loving Support Makes Breastfeeding Work” since the 1990s.

Because of the success of the program to promote breastfeeding among WIC clients, the demand for training in social marketing grew and led Bryant to establish the Social Marketing Conference and Training Academy, a conference held every two years that draws public health professionals from across the globe.

As a result, Bryant has taught more than 6,000 public health professionals on how to use social marketing to get communities engaged in a healthy behavior.

“This is a totally different approach, it [social marketing] focuses first on understanding and respecting and honoring people,” she said. “Once you have that insight, you often can take what science says will make them healthier, and their community a better place to live, and define it for them and recommend ways that they can do that within their life and their dreams.”

Bryant with FPRC staff and attendees during the 2016 Social Marketing Conference. (Photo courtesy of Bobbi Rose)

She said thanks to the support of COPH administration including COPH Dean Donna Petersen, Paula Knaus, associate dean for faculty affairs, and Jay Evans, chief operating officer, she was able to get social marketing efforts off the ground.

In addition to the Social Marketing Conference and Training Academy and the FPRC, Bryant also established the graduate certificate in social marketing, MPH social marketing concentration, and USF’s World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Social Marketing and Social Change.

“She has invested enormous creative energy over the past 28 years to build the USF social marketing program into the world-class status it enjoys today,” said Dr. William Sappenfield, director of the Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies.

Bryant said one of her proudest professional achievements is the work she’s done at the FPRC, one of 26 named Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Centers in the nation, funded by the CDC.

“I’ve always believed in the power of the community owning the problem and the solutions,” Bryant said. “At the FPRC that is the hallmark of what they do.”

According to Bryant, each center has a specialty they focus on, but only the USF center uses social marketing to promote change among the community.

“It’s terribly satisfying to see a community solve a problem that they’ve had for a long time and be given a new of way thinking about problem-solving that they never thought about before,” she said.

The FPRC has sustained funding since 1998, according to Bryant, and over that span of time has taught communities how to use social marketing to design programs and bring about policy change. Their newest focus is now bringing about entire systems change.

Tali Schneider, COPH alumna and FPRC program administrator, who has worked with Bryant for seven years said she’s always appreciated Bryant’s passion and friendly demeanor.

“I love the way she gets enthusiastic when new ideas are presented,” Schneider said. “She always listens to others and gives her sincere opinion. She has the gift of presenting any idea or news, good or bad, in a positive light and convincing manner.”

Bryant said that while it was difficult to leave, she is confident that the FPRC will continue to do great work.

“We found a person who is a far better social marketer than I, Dr. Claudia Parvanta, who used to be the health communication director at the CDC,” she said. “So, while I miss everybody, I don’t worry about them, I know they are in great hands. I know they will continue doing fabulous work and I am so grateful to USF in supporting that work.”

Dr. Claudia Parvanta and Dr. Carol Bryant during Bryant’s retirement party, hosted at Parvanta’s personal residence. (Photo by Anna Mayor)

Parvanta, who also serves as a full-time professor in CFH, said she had interacted for decades with Bryant on social marketing efforts before joining the COPH.

“I always thought of Carol as one of a very few social marketers who worked in academia—most of us were in the private sector or government at the time. But, until coming here in January, I had no idea how hard Carol works, and how much effort she puts into every project,” Parvanta said. “Even though she very nicely handed over the reins of the PRC to me, she continued to show up, and work hard, until the minute she retired. And she is counting the days until she is allowed to ‘volunteer’ for USF social marketing efforts. She is a role model on so many levels, not only for her students, but for her colleagues around the globe.”

Parvanta said a scholarship fund has been initiated in honor of Bryant and work in the field of social marketing.

“If you have ever studied with Dr. Bryant, worked with her, benefited from her advice, or just like her, please contribute something to help us launch the next wave of social marketers,” Parvanta said.

To donate to the Carol A. Bryant Social Marketing Scholarship, click here.

Bryant addresses her former colleagues during her retirement party thanking them for all their hard work, “Not a day goes by that I don’t miss each one of you,” she said. (Photo by Anna Mayor)

Bryant’s colleagues revel in memories each speaker shared during Bryant’s retirement party. Colleagues came from near and far, including some who traveled from Washington, D.C., to share in the celebrations. (Photo by Anna Mayor)

After toasts, Bryant cut into the celebratory cake reading “Best Wishes Dr. Carol Bryant, You Made a Difference.” (Photo by Anna Mayor)

Bryant said in retirement she will focus her attention on her new passions of art, pottery, glass fusion, photography, and spending time with family.

“I learned something new every day [at USF] and I loved the people I’ve worked with and I will miss them every day, but it is time for me to take care of this almost 70-year-old body and see what I can do in the art field,” Bryant said.

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

The post Dr. Carol Bryant’s career of improving lives through social marketing appeared first on College of Public Health News.

More than 200 attendees gathered at the 24^th Social Marketing Conference, June 15-18, in Clearwater, Fla., hosted by USF College of Public Health’s Department of Community and Family Health.

Social marketing has been vital to planning numerous public health interventions, according to Dr. Carol Bryant, Distinguished USF Health Professor.

“It’s a very sophisticated way to plan interventions to bring about social change,” she said. “USF is the leader in this country in teaching it and it has gained quite a bit of traction, in fact, the Healthy People 2020 document now includes objectives for social marketing.”

The USF College of Public Health has been providing training on social marketing since 1998. (Photo by Bobbi Rose)

According to Bryant, since 1998, USF has been involved in teaching various coalitions and state health departments on bringing about social change on a wide range of topics, from preventing drinking among middle school students to encouraging citrus pickers to wear their safety glasses.

The 24^th Social Marketing Conference drew attendees from all over the globe to gain hands-on experience in the growing field.

Attendees also had the option to take part in the conference’s two-day Social Marketing Training Academy, which is described on the conference website as a “concentrated product for thirsty learners.”

Attendees take part in a hands-on team building activity during the training academy portion of the event. (Photo by Bobbi Rose)

As part of the training academy, attendees learned how to segment an audience base, come up with behavioral goals, and conduct the research necessary to understand the ideals of a specific target audience.

“Social marketing is not social media or advertising,” Bryant said. “The conference helped them to use what I find to be a very sophisticated planning tool for bringing about change.”

The event also included presentations from practitioners working in the field, providing real world examples of how social marketing works.

Ten different countries and territories were represented at the event, including scholarships awarded for attendees from Brazil and Nigeria.

“The conference delivered on my expectations and more­­­—professional development, fresh thoughts, new ideas, networking, etcetera,” said Sonayon Ajose, an attendee from Nigeria and recipient of a scholarship. “I also was thrilled to meet in person with quite a number of social marketing professionals I have followed online and eulogized their works over the years.”

Scholarship recipient, Sanoyon Ajose (far right), and other attendees of the event. (Photo by Bobbi Rose)

Scholarships were provided by the various organizations involved in social marketing who were present at the event.

The conference is offered every other year and will be presented again in 2018.

For more information regarding the event, visit the conference’s website.

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

The post Social Marketing Conference inspires action appeared first on College of Public Health News.

USF College of Public Health Alumna Candace Webb was an 18-year-old freshman in college planning to become a doctor when she lost her mother to HIV, something she had no idea her mother was even battling.

“My trajectory changed from wanting to be a clinician to wanting to work on addressing the roots of health disparities,” she said. “My family was thrust into having to deal with losing the matriarch of our family.”

She dove headfirst into her own research, trying to understand more about HIV, the stigma that prevents disclosure and its impact on the African American community, frequently coming across names of researchers with a common degree following their names—MPH.

“I decided to learn about what public health is versus just what medicine is,” she said.

After completing her bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida in health education and behavior, Webb came back to her home town of Tampa to earn her MPH from the COPH in the Department of Community and Family Health in 2006.

Candace Webb, MPH (Photo courtesy of Candace Webb)

“Public health practitioners treat the community, we treat the population, we look at trends and disparities and we focus on promoting health equity and social justice in the health care system. So, I thought that I could be more impactful doing work at the community and population health level, which is why I course corrected from medicine to public health,” Webb said.

She became fascinated about political and moral issues of public health, leading her to complete her field experience with amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research’s public policy office in Washington, D.C., where she interviewed individuals working on the front line of women’s health and HIV.

“USF positioned me to get my first job before I even graduated,” Webb said.

She was offered a job as a result of her COPH field experience and starting working as a program associate for the AIDS Alliance for Children, Youth, and Families before she even graduated.

Her career blossomed even more in D.C. when she moved on to work with the National Women’s Law Center, a legal organization advocating for the rights of women and girls of lower socioeconomic status, during the time the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was being written.

Webb served as a community organizer and women’s health and reproductive rights advocate while at the National Women’s Law Center, leading national outreach and communications efforts, as well as collaborating with other civil, human and women’s-rights based organizations, to make sure that the rights of women’s health needs were front and center in the ACA.

“That was a really exciting part of my career, being part of this major women’s legal advocacy organization during a really critical period of time where we had an important piece of health care legislation come into being and put into law,” she said.

Webb at the White House. (Photo courtesy of Candace Webb)

She’s also worked for the National Institutes of Health, as a scientific program analyst, which opened the door to one of her biggest career milestones yet.

Webb is currently the branch chief of the western services branch in the Division of State HIV/AIDS Programs within the HIV/AIDS Bureau at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“We make sure that people who need assistance with financially coping with HIV disease get access to medical services, as well as social support services,” she said. “So, it’s really the public health approach, we remove the barriers to getting quality care and enhance the facilitators and what helps people get and stay engaged in their health care.”

Webb is responsible for the programmatic supervision and management of funding provided by the HIV/AIDS Bureau to support implementation of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009, a program that provides more than 540,000 people living with HIV with medical and support services.

She oversees the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program Part B and AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) grants of 19 states in the western region of the U.S. and six Pacific Island jurisdictions, including American Samoa, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Marshall Islands, Northern Mariana Islands and Palau.

“People in HRSA are very mission oriented, of the federal HHS family of agencies, we are very passionate about public health and addressing the roots of health disparities and the social and structural determinants of health,” she said. “Our mission is about health equity in vulnerable populations and ensuring quality access to health care.”

Webb said one of her proudest professional achievements has been working on Capitol Hill accompanying people living with HIV, coaching them on how to educate their elected officials to advocate for funding and services they need back home.

“Being able to empower people with a stigmatized condition, or people who felt disenfranchised or without a voice, and help them find their own voice and use it to talk to Congress to influence their decisions, that is always just so powerful,” she said.

After working with HRSA for a little more than three years as a project officer, Webb was promoted in April to branch chief. (Photo courtesy of Candace Webb)

It’s clear that Webb’s passion for HIV, women’s health and public health advocacy are strong and she credits her time as a graduate student at the COPH for pointing her in the direction of how to apply that passion.

“I really connected with the CFH department faculty and I still have great connections with them now, especially Drs. Ellen Daley [professor] and Kay Perrin [associate professor and assistant dean for Undergraduate Studies],” she said. “I had great support and having the graduate research assistantship the entire time I was there did help overcome the financial responsibilities of doing a master’s program.”

“Dr. Carol Bryant [distinguished USF Health professor] told me at one point in class that I was going to be a HRSA project officer one day, that stuck with me and she put it in my head, and here I am, I’m exactly what Dr. Bryant told me what she could see me becoming,” Webb said. “That’s very cool!”

As a founding member of the International Health Service Collaborative (IHSC) student group, an interdisciplinary organization run by students from across USF Health, Webb was a part of the inaugural IHSC service trip to the Dominican Republic in 2005. She also took part in study abroad programs at the University of Cape Town School of Public Health in South Africa while a CFH MPH student.

Webb said she hopes to continue practicing her public health passion in public service.

She said her public health practice is ensuring health equity for vulnerable populations, particularly women and youth, and her passion is extending the lives of people living with HIV by ensuring access to acceptable and compassionate health care for all people.

“I’m a very strong social justice advocate and I have a human rights based approach to public health. I believe every human being should have a right to quality health care and this belief, which I’m very passionate about, drives me in my day-to-day work, and is why I enjoy working in public health,” she said. “I’m able to apply my personal values and what I feel is really important, mission-driven work, and public health has a huge mission because it affects vulnerable populations.”

***

Fast Five for COPH Alumni:

What did you dream of becoming when you were young?

Doctor.

What book are you currently reading?

“Start with Why,” by Simon Sinek.

Where would we find you on the weekend?

At church, brunch and then talking a walk on the National Mall in D.C.

What superpower would you like to have?

Shape shifting.

What’s your all-time favorite movie? 

“The Color Purple” and “Up.”

 Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

The post Alumna Candace Webb moves up the ranks in public service appeared first on College of Public Health News.

The team members of the University of South Florida World Health Organization Collaboration Center (WHO CC) were awarded a grant to create social marketing strategies to reduce sodium consumption in Latin America. USF is part of an overall project funded at $1.2 million.

Anthropology Professor Linda Whiteford and Distinguished Health Professor Carol Bryant have been awarded this research grant through the International Development Research Center to facilitate training and education about health interventions in Latin America. Their work will focus on implementing social marketing tactics in five countries to change behaviors about sodium consumption.

From left: USF’s team behind the WHO Center include: Tali Schneider, MPH, COPH research associate; Distinguished Health Professor Carol Bryant, PhD, COPH; Wayne Westhoff, PhD, retired COPH associate professor global health; Linda Whiteford, PhD, MPH, professor of anthropology & COPH affiliate faculty; Jim Lindenberger, director of the Social Marketing Group; and, Mahmooda Khaliq Pasha, MHS, COPH doctoral student and center administrator.
Not pictured: Twenty-First Century Scholar James Mihelcic, PhD, professor of engineering; Rowena Merritt, PhD, COPH affiliate faculty; Kathy Anderson, PhD, COPH affiliate faculty; Lisa Brown, PhD, associate professor in the College of Behavioral and Community Services; Mike McCarthy, PhD; and, Alyssa Mayer, MPH, COPH doctoral student. (Photo courtesy of Eric Younghans)

“Our Center is looking forward to building our work in the Caribbean by training five Latin America country teams to use social marketing principles to create a plan to reduce salt consumption in their nations,” Bryant said. “We know that there will be many differences between countries, but we also hope to find cross-cutting themes that can be used in materials disseminated to broad regions within the hemisphere.”

According to Whiteford, sodium consumption is an associative factor in heart attacks, stroke, diabetes and hypertension. This project will allow Whiteford and Bryant to work with a large population of individuals in Latin America, who intake more sodium per day than the recommended limit due to cultural consumption habits.

“The reason people are paying attention to sodium is because it is associated with a series of health outcomes that can kill you, and if they don’t kill you, they can cost the government a lot of money in terms of care and in terms of rehabilitation,” Whiteford said.

The grant will allow the WHO CC to provide social marketing training and technical assistance to teams from the Pan American Health Organization and five Latin American countries – Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Costa Rica and Peru. The project will take place during a three-year period to create and implement social marketing strategies based on the needs of citizens in each country.

“This is good ethnography, it’s good public health and it’s good social marketing,” Whiteford said. “It is eliciting from people what the constraints are on their lives, what the factors are that affect what they do and what they think might help them make changes.” Whiteford and Bryant’s project will begin in March. The ministries of health from each of the five Latin American countries will supply four to six members to form research teams. The project will focus on education, training and research as Whiteford and Bryant will teach the teams how to do market research in their home countries.

“They [the research teams] do the marketing plan, and they do the work,” Whiteford said. “They put it in place in their country, because they are the only ones who know their country the way they do. Then we [WHO CC] do an evaluation to see what works and what doesn’t.”

The teams in each country will be assessing the sodium content of a variety of foods and then comparing these levels with national and regional sodium reduction targets. Research will be conducted to determine consumer attitudes and behavior toward sodium intake. Members of the project will apply social marketing principles to determine the health and economic benefits of sodium reduction.

Whiteford and Bryant’s roles are to receive data from the teams and then analyze it to develop the appropriate social marketing plan. They also will work with fellow USF WHO CC team members, Mahmooda Pasha and Jim Lindenberger. Pasha will focus on data analysis for the project, while Lindenberger will work on logistics and budgeting. “We work as a team and we’ll all be doing the social marketing,” Whiteford said. “And then two of us are anthropologists, Carol Bryant and I, so we’ll be doing the anthropology.”

This project is multidisciplinary and will bring together faculty and students from the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Public Health. It will allow USF project members to work with professionals from global health and development agencies, ministries of health and non-governmental organizations.

Read the full story at the USF College of Arts and Sciences

Related story:
USF College of Public Health Becomes World Health Organization Collaborating Center

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The Social Marketing Conference enters its 24th year with a continued and vigorous commitment to social marketing’s robust capacity to influence complex social problems. Based at the Sheraton Sand Key Resort in Clearwater, FL, the June 17-18 conference includes plenary sessions, interactive panels and focused collaborative sessions.

Some of the attendees at the 2013 Social Marketing Conference.

Carol Bryant, PhD, MS, director of USF’s Florida Prevention Research Center and founder of the Social Marketing Conference, is a major presenter and trainer. According to Bryant, social marketing has potential applications in myriad fields, including environmental studies, sustainability, transportation, financial literacy, education, not-for-profit management, labor relations, engineering, public health, and health care. “These and many other fields can benefit from social marketing’s consumer-centered, strategic approach to influencing change,” she said.

A USF Health distinguished professor in the Department of Community and Family Health, Bryant explains why this year’s conference will be extra special. “While global inequality has lessened over the past century, more recent times have shown a marked increase in inequality in finances, health, political access, and social mobility,” she said. “This year’s theme, “Building on the Legacy: Forging New Paths,” looks at these pressing contemporary issues and how the field can lead the way in creating new solutions. This conference looks to the new challenges and solutions which social marketing is called to engage.”

The conference is divided into two sections, with a training component June 15-16, then the main conference on June 17-18.

Newcomers to the field are encouraged to attend the Social Marketing Training Academy in addition to the main conference. This two-day intensive pre-conference training offers participants an opportunity to gain social marketing expertise in a concentrated time frame. Using a combination of live case studies and interactive group exercises, academy trainers help participants understand how to increase the impact of behavioral change by learning the core elements of a successful social marketing initiative.

Dr. Carol Bryant (right) presents Sahilja Mathur (left) with her certificate of completion at the 2014 Social Marketing Training Academy.

The main conference consists of plenary sessions with national leaders in education, design and organizational development; panel presentations and conversations that focus on a variety of topics relevant to the practice, application and dissemination of social marketing; continuing professional development; and, collaboratories—facilitated discussions designed to dive more deeply into emerging issues and explore ways to apply innovative ideas for social marketing education, training and practice.

Additionally, examples of social marketing practice and research will be showcased during a poster walk and reception.

Plenary Speakers include:

• Phil D. Harvey, founder of DKT International
• Dr. Punam Keller, professor of management, Tuck Business School, Dartmouth University
• Dr. William “Bill” Smith, president of Making Change4U
• Dr. Fiona Spotswood, senior lecturer at University of the West of England
• Dr. Sharyn Rundle-Thiele, president of ANZMAC and professor at Griffith University
• Jeffrey Jordan, president and executive creative director of Rescue Social Change Group

For additional information on the Social Marketing Conference and to register, visit http://thesocialmarketingconference.org/ or contact Ms. Tali Schneider at tschneid@health.usf.edu.

Related story:
Social marketing concentration a national first for COPH

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

The post USF hosts international Social Marketing Conference, June 17-18 appeared first on College of Public Health News.

The Florida Prevention Research Center (FPRC) at the USF College of Public Health worked with the Lexington, Kentucky Tweens Nutrition and Fitness coalition to make healthy foods more accessible throughout the city.

One initiative, Better Bites: Snack Strong, provides technical assistance and marketing support to improve the nutritional quality of menus at venues that cater predominately to youth.

Healthy food offerings that meet Better Bites: Snack Strong nutrition guidelines now appear on menus at public pools and government cafeterias, school concessions, movie theaters, restaurants, summer camps, Kentucky State Parks and many other venues.

Like many cities, Lexington has seen a sharp rise in childhood obesity. One in three Lexington youth, between ages five to 18, are overweight or obese.

Research revealed that many residents had difficulty purchasing healthy foods in their neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and recreational venues. Though youth are encouraged to eat healthy food, they are often not available at the places they frequent.

The FPRC and Tweens Nutrition and Fitness Coalition used social marketing principles and techniques to gain the insights needed to select and promote policy and environmental changes to make healthy foods more accessible “where ever people live, learn work and play.”

“By making healthy food more normative we hope to change youth’s expectations about what constitutes an enjoyable snack at a public venue,” said Dr. Carol Bryant of the FPRC. “In our opinion, the community’s leadership and the use of social marketing were the essential ingredients.”

The Better Bites: Snack Strong initiative gained important traction as soon as the Parks and Recreation Department adopted it.

Nutritionists on the coalition worked with park staff to design eight healthful food options to sell at public pools, capturing ten percent of sales and significant media attention in the months immediately after introduction in 2011.

Sales data and interviews conducted with youth and concession stand staff at participating pools were used to make menu adjustments.

Better Bites sales increased by 267 percent from 2011 to 2014.

In 2014, Better Bites were accessible to the 104,700 pool visitors and accounted for nearly 40 percent of total sales, and in 2015, 65 percent of the items on the public pool menus met Better Bites nutrition guidelines, compared to eight percent before the initiative started.

A variety of other recreational facilities also have adopted Better Bites: Snack Strong menu items, including numerous restaurants, the local minor league baseball team’s stadium concession stand, the YMCA and other after-school programs, school concession stands, summer camps and city-sponsored youth groups.

In addition, a Better Bites: Snack Strong branded bicycle cart delivers healthful snacks like fresh fruit and yogurt parfaits throughout the city’s neighborhoods.

Kentucky’s State Government now offers Better Bites at three cafeterias—Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Department of Transportation and the Kentucky State Capita—that serve thousands of people each week.

The State Department of Parks also changed its food policy to adopt Better Bites: Snack Strong in all 17 state park restaurant locations.

Moreover, Better Bites: Snack Strong was featured on a local television news broadcast, and the program continues to expand.

According to FPRC, healthy food options are becoming more normalized in the Lexington community.

In 2014, fruit outsold chicken nuggets, three to one, at the public pools.

“Systems for procuring, storing, serving and marketing healthier items have been developed making it easier to bring new partners on board,” said Bryant.

Story by Carol Bryant, Florida Prevention Research Center

The post Florida Prevention Research Center helps youth to “Snack Strong” appeared first on College of Public Health News.