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.

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Social marketing uses commercial marketing principles (e.g., solving a customer’s problem with a product or service) to achieve socially beneficial ends, such as health and safety.

Building upon previous research, Dr. Claudia Parvanta, a USF College of Public Health professor who specializes in social marketing and health communication, and colleagues helping the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (CDC/NIOSH), interviewed company leads across the United States about their experiences and perceptions of COVID-19 testing.

Testing was promoted early in the pandemic as a critical tool to ensure workplace safety.

The study, “In Search of a Value Proposition for COVID-19 Testing in the Work Environment: A Social Marketing Analysis,” was published in September in the journal IJERPH.

“In reviewing qualitative data from the original study [which looked at barriers to COVID-19 testing among U.S. employers], I saw repeated comments about COVID-19 testing products,” Parvanta said. “There were comments about the tests and their costs, accessibility [the study was conducted in early 2021, before rapid tests were widely available] and how the testing had been communicated from state and federal agencies to employers and then their workforce. I suggested we reanalyze the data using a social marketing framework: product, price, place and promotion—the so-called four Ps of social marketing.”

What Parvanta and her colleagues found was that employers felt that PCR testing for COVID-19, which requires a reading from a lab, had a poor “value proposition.” In other words, noted Parvanta, the benefit of testing—which was being able to return to work quickly if results were negative—was negated by a variety of factors, including the time it took to get PCR test results, its uncomfortable administration, the logistical arrangements necessary for worksite use and the lingering positivity in individuals who no longer were infectious or experiencing symptoms.

“COVID-19 testing has evolved since the study was done,” Parvanta acknowledged, “and now anyone should be able to acquire a home antigen test kit. The larger issue from a workplace health perspective is using these results, which have a high false-negativity rate, to allow employees who had COVID-19 to return to work and trust that employees administering the test at home are getting accurate results. Our study suggested that communications about testing, or any mitigation tactics, could be targeted to industries based on how employees perceived their risk of exposure to air-borne diseases.”

According to Parvanta and her colleagues, this is the first study to apply a social marketing approach to employer experiences and perceptions to COVID-19 testing.

“Besides providing a detailed snapshot about this period in the pandemic, it demonstrates the use of a social marketing analysis in occupational safety and health (OSH),” Parvanta said. “The Florida Prevention Research Center used social marketing to improve citrus worker safety early in the center’s existence, but social marketing is much more widely seen in chronic and infectious disease prevention directed to the public at large. Publication with this research team in this journal could lead to more social marketing in OSH and, hence, more voluntary adoption of health and safety behaviors in the workplace.”   

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

The post Using a social marketing lens to examine employers’ experiences with COVID-19 testing appeared first on College of Public Health News.

In June 2020, the Office of Minority Health (OMH), part of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced the award of a $40 million grant to the Morehouse School of Medicine and key strategic partners, including the USF College of Public Health’s (COPH) Florida Prevention Research Center (FPRC). Along with ICF Next, a global marketing agency, the FPRC is part of the communication cluster of the National COVID-19 Resiliency Network (NCRN).

In year one of this three-year grant, the partners have worked with community-based organizations across the nation to develop and test culturally and linguistically appropriate communication resources about vaccination for minority groups who have been particularly affected by COVID-19.

Throughout the project period, the FPRC team:

• Conducts literature reviews addressing current knowledge, attitudes and behaviors in regard to COVID-19 mitigation strategies.
• Helps develop the formative research plans and methodology.
• Provides training and technical assistance to community partners in using Community-Based Prevention Marketing (CBPM) to use social marketing to enhance messaging to specific audiences. CBPM is a program-planning framework developed by the FPRC that combines community engagement with social marketing to achieve sustainable change.
• Use neuromarketing methods to test communication materials. Neuromarketing uses physiological sensors to detect eye tracking, facial expressions and brain activity that reflect emotional response to a test stimulus, in this case, communication media developed for social media or print.

The FPRC team is training their third cohort of community organizations on what social marketing is and how they can apply it to COVID-19 vaccine uptake for the priority populations with which they work.

According to Dr. Mahmooda Khaliq Pasha, a COPH alumna and assistant professor who is a co-principal investigator on the project, “What we found is that through our approach using the community’s expertise and building  a persona, we were able to provide a vivid representation of the community and identify some of the barriers to access and the reasons behind why a specific community may not be getting vaccinated.”

Pasha said that so far, the impact of their research has been successful in helping community-based organizations to see the benefit of tailoring messaging to fit their communities rather than relying solely on generic mass media that seek to appeal to everyone.

Angela Makris, COPH PhD student and research assistant for the FPRC, presented on their research using the CBPM framework and creation of population personas at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting from October 24-27.

“Our other role in the project is pretesting materials created by an ICF Next. We collaborate with the Muma College of Business Center for Sales and Marketing Innovation, which provides the neuromarketing research software. When we collect enough data across all of the tests, we will be able to create statistical models of how emotional responses relate to attitudes about the COVID-19 vaccine, “said Dr. Claudia Parvanta, COPH professor and project principal investigator. “With neuromarketing we can test the effects of communications tailored to specific racial and ethnic backgrounds. We have long assumed this is better, but this project provides a chance to measure the effects on a deeper level than self-report.”

Read more about this story here.

Story by Caitlin Keough, USF College of Public Health

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An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of South Florida has pooled its expertise and resources in order to help influence the effectiveness of public health messaging related to COVID-19.

Researchers are collaborating with public health agencies and businesses to combine neuromarketing and biometric tools from the Muma College of Business Center for Marketing and Sales Innovation neuromarketing lab with expertise in social marketing and health communications from the College of Public Health and Zimmerman School of Advertising. Funded by a $25,000 USF COVID-19 Rapid Response grant, the neuro-social marketing research team is analyzing local print ads, television commercials and other marketing materials published online. The goal is to improve the effectiveness of messages crafted to motivate patients to resume routine appointments and seek emergency care during the pandemic. The research entails combining eye tracking, facial expression analysis and survey data to provide new insights on how people react to public health messages.

“This research is both impactful and groundbreaking,” said Rob Hammond, instructor and director of the Center for Marketing and Sales Innovation. “By adding objective biometric data to opinion surveys, we can improve message assessments based on opinion surveys to produce more effective public health messages that can in turn save lives.”

“It is important, especially for populations with pre-existing medical conditions, to return for routine health care services to maintain their health, yet, there is fear about doing so,” said principal investigator Kim Walker, associate professor of mass communications. “We have learned that people do not always report their feelings accurately on pen and paper and incorporating a neuromarketing approach can validate subjective measures to inform emotive health care advertising.”

Baycare Health System has been a key partner, providing unaired video and print materials, as well as inviting some of its patient populations to participate in the study. 

“BayCare is excited to collaborate with USF to help understand the effectiveness of public health messaging in the midst of a pandemic,” said Ed Rafalski, senior vice president and chief strategy and marketing officer for BayCare. “Through this research collaboration, our goal is to get better insight into consumers in the Tampa Bay area and how the ongoing pandemic affects their overall health care decisions.”

This project is one of several important public health research collaborations. Earlier this year, the team was awarded a three-year cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health to address the impact of COVID-19 among racial and ethnic populations. Through the National COVID-19 Resiliency Network, USF faculty and students are working with the Morehouse School of Medicine and organizations across the nation to develop and test culturally and linguistically appropriate information on resources for COVID-19 testing, health care, social services and vaccines.

“Our COVID communications begin with community input, which will make them more authentic and tailored than if we start with generic materials,” said principal investigator Claudia Parvanta, professor of social marketing and director of the Florida Prevention Research Center. “The ability to then use distance-based neuromarketing tools to see if the intended audiences respond as we hope is completely new in the social marketing and health communications field.”

The first organization to recognize the potential of USF’s neuro-social marketing research team was the Florida Department of Health Bureau of Tobacco Free Florida. It awarded the group $250,000 in early March 2020 to create a protocol for testing anti-smoking advertisements. The researchers studied how participants reacted to tobacco public service announcements and the association of these responses to intentions to quit smoking, desire to share particular videos on social media or visit the Tobacco Free Florida website to assess smoking cessation resources.

The researchers had originally planned to conduct the study in the Center for Marketing and Sales Innovation lab, which in addition to eye tracking and facial expression analysis, offers electroencephalograms (EEGs), used to study brain activity, and sensors that measure galvanic skin response, which reflects the intensity of emotion. But like many aspects of research, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the USF team to pivot its approach to evaluating the impact of these public health messages. They expedited the project by working with the lab’s technology partner, iMotions, to develop computer software that allowed researchers to continue the study remotely, using participants’ web cameras. While inconsistent lighting and positioning added complications, researchers say the process better predicted how individuals were impacted by the public service announcements rather than relying strictly on opinion scores. The team is now working to publish its findings in academic journals.

In addition to health-based projects, the Center for Marketing and Sales Innovation has partnerships with several businesses and organizations. It signed its first corporate research agreement in 2019 with Revenue Management Solutions, an international company that provides data-driven solutions and services to the restaurant industry, such as providing recommendations on menu design and navigation. The center has also conducted research that gauged public perception of political figures, such as candidate performance during the February 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate.

Reposted from USF Newsroom

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Colorectal cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the US. While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) covers colorectal cancer screening (CRCS) procedures that can catch colorectal cancer early, when it’s most treatable, there are disparities in utilization rates. 

Dr. Aldenise Ewing, a USF College of Public Health (COPH) alum, and her colleagues wanted to find out why. Their research, “The Early Impact of the Affordable Care Act Upon Colorectal Screening Utilization in Florida,” was published in the fall issue of the Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice. The study was conducted with the help of fellow COPHers Drs. Marlene Joannie Bewa, Claudia Parvanta and Dinorah Martinez Tyson, as well as others.

The research was a collaborative effort and conducted as part of a larger study funded through a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) grant to the Florida Prevention Research Center (FPRC). The FPRC was previously designated as one of 26 Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Centers in the nation funded by the CDC.

“Recommended screening for adults age 50 and older could prevent more than 50 percent of [colon cancer] deaths, yet rates in Florida vary based on certain demographic factors including race/ethnicity, gender and insurance status,” said Ewing, who is now an applied postdoctoral fellow in the behavioral oncology program at Moffitt Cancer Center. “Knowing that Florida has not expanded Medicaid, and the age for recommended screening has now been lowered to 45 nationwide, it was important for us to enhance our knowledge of remaining barriers by speaking with health care providers.”

The researchers interviewed a total of 22 health care providers about their experience with the ACA and CRCS utilization. The providers noted that some of the individual-level barriers patients faced in utilizing CRCS were a general lack of knowledge of the importance of the screening and fear of the procedures. But the biggest barriers of all, said Ewing, were at the organizational level. These barriers included unaffordable health care and out-of-pocket costs (such as lab fees) associated with the screening methods, even with ACA coverage.

“Our country has decidedly linked health care to employment,” Ewing said. “Yet for many working adults, doctor visits for routine cancer screenings are still not affordable. With regard to colorectal cancer specifically, even effective at-home based alternatives to a colonoscopy—still the gold standard—require organized clinic partnerships for laboratory testing and follow-up diagnostic colonoscopies as needed. Federally Qualified Healthcare Centers (FQHCs) provide these services on a sliding fee scale, but they are less widely available and critically dependent on federal funding to sustain partnerships.”

What will it take to get cancer screening utilization rates up?

“This is a deeply rooted systemic issue with many barriers requiring many solutions,” Ewing said. “But we must continue to publish studies that highlight the inequities in cancer disparities and push for equitable health policy at the state and federal levels.” Building authentic research partnerships to meet the needs of the underserved is also a step in the right direction, she noted.

Bewa, a COPH PhD student, FPRC research assistant and one of the study’s co-investigators, concurs.

“It’s important to ensure that communities are educated and aware of their cancer risk as well as the screening options and resources available to them that address barriers,” said Bewa. “Overall, a health equity lens is needed to address colorectal cancer screening barriers and disparities. We hope [our study results] will be used by policymakers to address the cancer burden in Florida.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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Menkeoma Laura Okoli first became interested in public health working at a medical internship in her native Nigeria.

“The hospital where I worked as a medical doctor received victims of bomb explosions perpetrated by terrorists,” says Okoli, who received her MPH with a concentration in epidemiology and biostatistics from the USF College Public Health (COPH) on December 7. “Besides the crucial emergency-medicine experience it provided, it got me thinking about volunteering. Several families were displaced and were now inhabitants of internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps, living in unhealthy and unfavorable conditions.”

Okoli (her first name, Menkeoma, means “do good” in Nigeria) became head of the medical team at Green Heart Impact Foundation, a charitable non-governmental organization that works to provide medical services and relief supplies to those living in IDP camps. She and her colleagues provided basic medical care, such as blood pressure readings and glucose screenings, as well as care packages containing mattresses, blankets, cooking utensils and groceries.

The experience gave her insight into how much still needed to be done for displaced people—and how much she still needed to learn in order to help them.

Menkeoma Laura Okoli with USF President Judy Genshaft at the 2018 Kente Awards and Scholarships Luncheon, held in April. (Photo courtesy of Okoli)

“On some of my outreach visits to the rural areas, I encountered children with hematuria [blood in the urine, which can occur from unclean drinking water]. I started to see the need for urgent policy reform. As a clinician, I can only affect the life of the individual. I wanted to do more,” she said.

With that goal in mind, Okoli decided to pursue her MPH in epidemiology and biostatistics.

“I wanted to learn how to effectively gather and analyze data and use the results for policy change,” Okoli explained. “I wanted to contribute to improving the lives of populations.”

Okoli researched schools of public health and ultimately decided on the USF COPH.

“The USF COPH is one of the best public health schools in the United States,” she said. “It is laden with faculty who are seasoned and vastly experienced in their respective fields.”

Okoli says she has her academic mentor, Dr. Kevin Kip, a USF Distinguished Health Professor and a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, to thank for much of her success. Besides giving her valuable research opportunities, he also gave her valuable advice.

“I had a rough first semester,” Okoli remembered. “But he listened and encouraged and motivated me to push through it all. He would tell me, ‘Never has there been great success without a storm,’ and I still tell myself this always.”

Okoli was the recipient of several scholarships while at the COPH, including the Lee Leavengood Senior Program Endowed Scholarship and the Student Honorary and Research Practice Award. She’s also worked as a research assistant at the Florida Prevention Research Center, where she focused on colorectal cancer screening and testing, and was a graduate research assistant in the epidemiology strategic area, working on NIH grant proposals, manuscript developments and research study participation.

Okoli plans to work for a year as an infection epidemiologist in a hospital setting before pursing her PhD. Her ultimate career goal: head epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“I think USF is a fantastic university and I love the fact that student success is a priority here,” Okoli said. “I think my time at the COPH was very well spent.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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For more than two decades, the USF College of Public Health’s Social Marketing Conference has drawn attendees from around the globe with the common interest of using strategic marketing principles to make the world a better place.

The COPH’s Florida Prevention Research Center (FPRC) has managed the conference, held every two years, since 1991.

Attendees of the 2018 health training academy gather for a group photo. (Photo by Angela Makris)

More than 200 attendees representing more than 30 states and 10 countries gathered at this year’s event held June 27-30 in Clearwater, Fla.

COPH meeting planner Bobbi Rose was the primary organizer assisted by the USF continuing education group. Dr. Rowena Merritt, director of Millbank Social Marketing, LTD of London served as the conference chair, with support from an external planning committee of global social marketing leaders, FPRC faculty, and members of the Social Marketing Association of North America (SMANA) and the International Social Marketing Association (iSMA).

Dr. Claudia Parvanta, professor of community and family health and director of the FPRC, said this conference stands out in bringing the “latest and greatest” in social marketing to the public health workforce at a very reasonable cost. Parvanta co-hosted the conference and instructed in the advanced training academy, the first time this was offered.

“People are saying that this has been the best conference in years, partly because we offered more choices for training, including one focused entirely on environmental issues—led by Steve Menzies of New Zealand—and because there was a real diversity of speakers, more contributed posters and presentations, and lots of new energy!” she said. “I also heard later that those who could not attend in person felt connected through our active Twitter feed—another new feature this year.”

Attendees included practitioners from public health departments, military representatives, students, and working professionals from all sectors.

Dr. Mahmooda Khaliq Pasha, COPH alumna, assistant professor of community and family health, and FPRC faculty has been involved with the Social Marketing Conference since its inception. She commented that the event has evolved throughout the years along with social marketing.

“It is the longest running conference in the social marketing field,” Khaliq Pasha said. “We have a basic process for how you do social marketing, but that process changes as we adopt new technologies, new media, and take on new challenges.”

Another conference first, keynote speakers—Timo Dietrich, Judd Harner, Ashani Johnson, Jeff Jordan and Sharyn Rundle-Thiele—followed their plenary sessions with small break-out groups to allow participants to brainstorm with them. These “hatch labs” were complemented by more traditional small sessions and mini workshops.

Keynote speakers, Akeem Ali and Christine Domegan, also presented at the conference.

“It had that collaborative feel to it, where it didn’t feel like speakers were talking at you, it had an engaging environment where you were working together toward a common goal and people felt that they were able to interact with high level social marketers,” Khaliq Pasha said.

Conference attendees and staff catch up during networking and poster sessions. (Photo by Angela Makris)

“The Social Marketing Conference has always been the practitioner’s conference, and the diversity of participants’ disciplines was so great this year—we had people from public health and clinical medicine as usual. But we also had a large number working on environmental issues, social care, marine protection and animal conservation, international aid, and engineering,” said conference chair Dr. Rowena Merritt. “To me this demonstrated the applicability of the social marketing tools and techniques to a whole range of ‘wicked’ problems.”

Dr. Rowena Merritt interacts with training academy participants. (Photo by Angela Makris)

Susan Kirby, associate editor for Social Marketing Quarterly and president of Kirby Marketing Solutions, said she attended this year for the networking opportunities.

“It was exceptional for a domestic social marketing conference,” she said. “This conference used to be known as a “beginner’s” conference, but this year was certainly quite different from that. I think it got me more up to speed on new modes of communication, partnering, and commercial/cause marketing.”

This year’s event garnered the largest number of poster submissions in conference history. (Photo by Angela Makris)

“The USF Social Marketing Conference is a mecca for alumni of USF’s social marketing graduate programs. I always look forward to this conference as a chance to reconnect with former classmates and instructors. USF plays a vital role in providing continuity for our profession through the USF Social Marketing Conference,” said Dr. Brian Biroscak, COPH alumnus and current SMANA vice president.

Awardees at this year’s event included:

The Phillip Kotler Social Marketing Distinguished Service Award
Sharyn Rundle-Thiele, PhD
Director of social marketing, Griffith University in Australia
Editor-in-chief, Journal of Social Marketing

The National Social Marketing Centre’s Award for Excellence in Social Marketing
Tony Zech, MBA, RD/RDN
Public health nutritionist/SNAP-ED coordinator at Department of Health Services in Madison, Wis.
“Partnership for a Healthier America’s FNV initiative”

Millbank’s Social Marketing Award for Innovation in the Environmental Field
Kelley Dennings, MPH, PMP
Director of social marketing, Action Research in Oceanside, Calif.
“Using Social Marketing to Change Winter Holiday Gift Giving Behavior and Improve Well-Being”

SMANA Outstanding Agency Award for Commitment to Elimination of Social Disparities
Oklahoma Nutrition Information and Education (ONIE) Project!

Taproot New Professional Award
Yana Manyuk, MA
Social marketing specialist, Sight and Life in Switzerland

The conference benefitted from commercial sponsorship (for attendee scholarships, the Twitter wall, tote bags, awards, refreshments, advertising and promotion), and the active participation of speakers and attendees, from AB InBev Foundation, Hager Sharp, the National Social Marketing Centre (UK), Porter Novelli, Rescue Agency, and Taproot in addition to iSMA, SMANA and Millbank, as well as COPH.

The next Social Marketing Conference will be held in 2020. Details will be posted on the Social Marketing Conference website.

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

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“For our graduates, thank you for joining the USF College of Public Health, thank you for being a part of our community, and thank you for taking the time to learn about this important and noble profession and to work hard to develop skills that you can take everywhere,” said Dean Donna Petersen.

On Thursday, May 3, the COPH hosted two celebratory events in honor of its newest graduates. Family, friends, students, faculty and staff gathered for a ceremony and reception to recognize the talents and achievements of the spring 2018 graduating class.

“There will be doors that open for you and you will decide whether to go through them or not. You’ll make good and wise decisions that will set you up to be exemplars of the profession,” said Dr. René Salazar, assistant professor of environmental and occupational health. “We thank you for your hard work and appreciate having you with us.”

Students after receiving their pins at the undergraduate pinning ceremony (Photo by Anna Mayor).

This semester, 143 undergraduates, 92 masters and 8 doctoral students graduated and entered the public health profession.

Every year the COPH Excellence in Teaching awardee offers words of inspiration to the graduating class. This year’s speaker was COPH alumnus Dr. Zachary Pruitt, assistant professor of health policy and management.

Dr. Zachary Pruitt animating his speech at the Masters and Doctoral Student Graduation Celebration (Photo by Caitlin Keough).

“The COPH instills us with the value to stay humble. Some of the college’s core values are social responsibility, social justice, a global perspective, altruism, diversity and inclusiveness,” Pruitt said. “They are the values of humility, so as you go out to the world keep these values with you.”

Guest speaker Melissa Dickson encouraging students during the undergraduate pinning ceremony (Photo by Ellen Kent).

During the undergraduate pinning ceremony, guest speaker Melissa Dickson, adjunct instructor at the COPH and community health educator for Humana, gave the graduates five steps to get them ready for their futures.

1. Recognize your strengths
2. Experience the world of public health
3. Accept new challenges
4. Do your research
5. You are enough

“So while I’m here to tell you to believe in yourself, I want you to know that there is only one you and you have so much to offer. You have a passion and a fight like no one else, so go after what you want and get to work,” Dickson said. “In case you haven’t caught on these steps spell ready. The world is waiting for you and your bright ideas.”

Here are some of the stories from the Class of 2018:

Jay Rajyaguru with Dr. René Salazar and Dean Donna Petersen at the Undergraduate Pinning Ceremony (Photo by Ellen Kent).

Originally an engineering major, BSPH graduate Jay Rajyaguru switched his major to public health after minoring in homeland security and emergency management.

“I’ve met many people who genuinely care about their students and their community at the COPH and I have learned a lot while being here,” Rajyaguru said. “The emergency management and homeland security courses that I have taken really boosted my knowledge of the field and provided opportunities for me to grow. I’ve learned so much from those specialized classes from some very knowledgeable faculty members. I have learned how to be a leader, teacher and friend to those whom I work with.”

As a student, Rajyaguru was heavily involved with the volunteer student program USF Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) as the deputy program director.

“CERT plans, trains, exercises and responds to emergencies. We also conduct community outreach to groups within and outside of the USF community,” he said. “This organization is part of a larger Disaster and Humanitarian Relief Student Collaborative, which does amazing work with the local refugee community. I sincerely hope that the COPH will continue to work with and increase their support for these organizations and their amazing work.”

Rajyaguru said he was inspired by all the volunteers he has worked with over his time at the COPH and thankful for their time and efforts.

“There are hundreds of students, faculty, staff, and community members that have given their time to helping the CERT team through sharing, training and responding to our communities’ needs both during emergencies and everyday activities,” he said. “Additionally, those in the emergency management programs, both educational and for the USF system, have made me realize that this is what I want to.”

One of Rajyaguru’s favorite memories was volunteering with response and relief during Hurricane Irma.

Jay Rajyaguru and his instructor Elizabeth Dunn being honored by Dean Petersen for their response efforts during Hurricane Irma (Photo by Fredrick Coleman).

“As strange as it may sound, Hurricane Irma was the highlight of my time here. My role involved bringing the USF community together to work toward the safety and security of Hillsborough County,” he said. “We had 198 volunteers from the COPH and multiple other programs that stepped up to help. Having a part in this role was an experience I will never forget.”

Rajyaguru’s future plans are to continue what he is currently doing: managing volunteers, training citizens and teaching the community about emergency preparedness.

“My end goal is to be able to share the knowledge that I have learned in the field to students as an instructor in a program similar to the COPH emergency management and homeland security program,” he said.

***

Virginia Liddell, MPH, with Dr. Russell Kirby and Dean Donna Petersen (Photo by Caitlin Keough).

Graduate Virginia Liddell attended Florida State University for her dual undergraduate degrees in psychology and international affairs with a certificate in leadership studies.

“After undergrad, I worked for a few years and found that I enjoyed planning programs, and working in community settings, she said. “A lot of research and chance lead me to social marketing and public health.”

“I chose to attend the COPH because they have one of the most robust programs for social marketing out of all of the other public health schools,” she said. “It definitely made sense to come here and have the opportunity to really get involved in social marketing!”

During her time at the COPH, Liddell was a graduate assistant with the Florida Prevention Research Center.

Liddell’s favorite memory of her time at the COPH was during Give Life Day during the 2018 National Public Health Week. The FPRC had set up a large walk-through colon the team that highlighted the types of polyps colonoscopies identify and remove in the prevention of colorectal cancer.

Virginia Liddell helped the FPRC explain the colon cancer and prevention (Photo by Anna Mayor).

“Everyone – the students, faculty and staff are so dedicated to their work and to the school,” she said. “I am proud of the time and dedication I have put in to getting my degree. I was very hesitant about first but it was definitely worth it!”

After graduation, Liddell will continue her work with the FPRC full-time.

***

“The COPH’s public health administration program was a perfect fit for my needs. I had two goals for this degree: study public health and enhance my knowledge of administration topics. Because I work full-time as a clinical social worker for the U.S. Navy and am stationed on Guam, I needed a CEPH-accredited distance education program.” Neil Rampy said. “This concentration was the perfect topic. It is 100% online, has asynchronous courses, CEPH accredited and has an excellent reputation.”

Neil Rampy graduated this May with his MPH with a concentration in public health administration.

Neil Rampy, MPH, MSW (Photo courtesy of Rampy).

Rampy earned his BS from Harding University in 2006 and a MSW from the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St Louis in 2012.  He is also a Florida licensed clinical social worker and a board certified diplomate in clinical social work  from the American Board of Examiners in Clinical Social Work.

After working in direct practice since 2007, Rampy saw the value of interventions with populations.

“I enjoy working one-on-one with my clients, but I realized my sphere of influence was small. I perceived myself to be constantly reacting and doing little by way of prevention. I learned that public health had a focus on populations, health promotion and disease prevention,” Rampy said. “During my MSW program the MPH was co-located within our school.  I came to see public health as complementary to my work in social services and clinical social work and wanted to expand my knowledge of this field.”

During his time as a student as well as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, Rampy faced a few challenges.

“Working full-time in this demanding job, studying and raising a family was challenging. I was awake at 4:40 a.m. every morning for study sessions and several hours each weekend were devoted to reading, lectures, and assignments,” he said. “However, the reward was worth the sacrifice.  I will use this degree for the rest of my career.”

Rampy currently has orders in hand to remain in Guam for another three years as the embedded psychological health provider for all Navy Expeditionary Combat Command units in the 7th Fleet area of operations (Indo-Asia-Pacific region).

In this role, Rampy is responsible for behavioral health promotion, treatment of behavioral health disorders and advising unit commanders on psychological health issues.

“I’ve had the opportunity to apply health administration topics learned from USF to a clinic setting at U.S. Naval Hospital Guam,” Rampy said. “With Task Force 75 I will have the opportunity to apply my knowledge of population health to keep our sailors psychologically ready.”

“I’m living my dream job! I am privileged to work with service members, retirees and their families. This is a great population. I’m sent all over the world to ply my trade and every location offers new challenges,” he said. “I’m never bored, and I have great colleagues. The corpsmen who support the providers are also amazing. They are patient-centered, committed to their work, and eager to learn.”

***

Undergraduate Daniel Ruiz earned dual degrees in public health and biomedical science.

Daniel Ruiz with Dr. René Salazar and Dean Donna Petersen at the Undergraduate Pinning Ceremony (Photo by Ellen Kent).

Ruiz started his public health journey as a freshman at USF by shadowing a physician. During this time, his childhood observations deepened with the realization that the low socioeconomic communities in the United States are also plagued by diabetes and lack the same level of prevention and resources.

“The fact that these consequences are preventable renders them more terrible, and my motivation to help with the education and prevention of chronic illness became increasingly pressing,” he said. “I decided to take a public health course to see if I can gain knowledge on health disparities and prevention knowledge. I ended up taking intro to public health with Dr. Makut Matawal, and his real world examples; especially those in Nigeria, made my interest grow and add public health as a major.”

Ruiz is most proud of growing as a person and learning during his time at the COPH.

“I am proud of my ability to grow as a student and thinking less about myself and more of how I can serve others. I realized that I do not need many tools to accomplish this besides my knowledge,” he said. “That allowed me to start a diabetes education class with the USF health clinic in Nicaragua.”

Ruiz said he doesn’t have a specific favorite memory, but that he has generally been excited for every public health lecture he attended.

“Learning from people who have experiences to back up their learning concepts is inspirational,” he said. “I have also enjoyed meeting classmates with altruistic values.”

After graduation, Ruiz will be attending Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine at Auburn University.

“I hope to one day get involved in politics and become a U.S. congressman,” he said. “I believe as a physician I will be able to guide policy making to take prevention more into account and advocate for citizens with chronic conditions who might not be able to advocate for themselves.”

Related media:
Undergraduate photo galleries on Facebook and Google Photos
Graduate photo galleries on Facebook and Box

Story by Caitlin Keough, USF College of Public Health

The post Get ready Class of 2018! appeared first on College of Public Health News.

The University of South Florida College of Public Health held a weeklong celebration to commemorate National Public Health Week, April 2-8.

Each year National Public Health Week is held during the first full week of April and is organized by the American Public Health Association (APHA), a government-based professional organization for public health professionals that prides itself on influencing federal policy and bringing together members from all fields of public health. The week is observed to recognize the contributions of public health and highlight important health issues.

To kick off the festivities, the Public Health Student Association and USF Health Shared Student Services hosted an inter-professional lunch and learn seminar. The seminar included a panel who discussed “Integrating Cultural Competency and Diversity in Health.” Panelists included Dr. Alicia Best, assistant professor of Community and Family Health from the COPH.

“A lot of times we think of cultural competence as a static thing, but it’s not. We all come from different values and backgrounds. We have to stress that it’s a mindset and we have to be open minded and truly care to understand another person’s values. We also need to focus our attention on systems; if we focus on a system then individuals operating within that system will operate with cultural competence,” said Best.

Other panel members included COPH alumnus Dr. Bryan Bognar, College of Medicine, Dr. Ponrathi Athlilingam, College of Nursing, and Cielo Gomez, founder of Casa Chiapas Tampa, Inc.

The Public Health Student Association and USF Health Shared Student Services hosted the panel. Panel members discussed the importance of integrating cultural competency in health care. (Photo by Ellen Kent)

On April 2, students took part in the “This is Public Health” social where they enjoyed ice cream and spoke to other student organizations about how to get involved in public health at USF.

Student representatives from some of COPH’s student organizations helped to kicked off the event, which included ice cream and informational tables to showcase the student groups. (Photo by Caitlin Keough)

The Give Life Day and Wellness Fair took place in the COPH lobby on April 3. COPHers were able to make a difference in someone’s life by donating blood with OneBlood and registering with the National Marrow Donor Program and Donate Life Florida. They also learned ways to take care of their own physical health through getting their BMI and blood pressure examined, learning about the importance of colon cancer screening, ways to alleviate stress, and how to engage in a proper nutritious diet.

USF COPH’s Dr. Heewon Gray, assistant professor of community and family health, was available for nutrition questions at the “Ask the Dietitian!” table. (Photo by Anna Mayor)

The USF COPH’s Florida Prevention Research Center stressed the importance of colorectal cancer prevention with their walk-through exhibit taking individuals inside a colon to highlight a polyp that can be found during early screening. (Photo by Anna Mayor)

Emily Walters, a first year MPH student concentrating on global health practice and epidemiology, helped to welcome visitors to the event. (Photo by Anna Mayor)

At the Annual Public Health Awards Ceremony on April 4, the COPH presented awards for student research, Excellence in Teaching, Florida Outstanding Woman in Public Health and Outstanding Alumni. Delta Omega inductees and academic scholarship recipients were also recognized. For a full list of awardees, including named student scholarships, view the 2018 National Public Health Week Awards Program.

(From left): Dr. Joannie Bewa, MPH student and PHSA president, Dr. Zachary Pruitt, Excellence in Teaching Awardee and assistant professor of health policy and management, and Dr. Donna Petersen, COPH dean. (Photo by Torie Doll)

(From left): Dr. Donna Petersen, COPH dean, with Florida Outstanding Woman in Public Health awardee Deanne Miranda Cornette, counsel for strategic development at the Agency for Community Treatment Services, Inc. Miranda Cornette is also a COPH alumna. (Photo by Torie Doll)

(From left): Outstanding Alumni Awardees, Dr. Sharad Suryakant Malavade, senior resident in internal medicine at Brandon Regional Hospital; Candace Webb, senior state health policy analyst with the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute Center for Children and Families; and Dr. Donna Petersen, COPH dean. (Photo by Torie Doll)

In celebration of World Health Day, the college, Florida Center for Community Design & Research, USF School of Architecture, and the Global Disaster Humanitarian Relief Student Collaborative hosted “Design+Health” on April 5 where public health experts discussed the health disparities and need for improvements in urban planning, transportation, food, agriculture and education in an effort to minimize the burden of disease.

Panel members (from left): Sarah Mason, sustainability and senior analyst for Strategic Property Partners; Allison Yeh, principal planner and sustainability coordinator for Hillsborough County; Dr. Donna Petersen, USF College of Public Health dean; Taryn Sabia, research associate professor for USF’s School of Architecture and Community Design and director of the Florida Center for Community Design and Research; and Joel Mills, senior director of Center for Communities by Design at the American Institute of Architects. (Photo by Anna Mayor)

An example Joel Mills showed during his opening discussion of how a community can impact health. (Photo by Anna Mayor)

The Annual Chiles Lecture and Symposium on April 6 presented current research of faculty, staff and students impacting the health of women, children and families. Dr. Paula Braveman, director of the Center on Social Disparities in Health at the University of California, San Francisco discussed, “To Achieve Health Equity, We Must Go (Even Farther) Upstream.”

Dr. Paula Braveman explained how chronic stress and disparities in education and income impact chronic disease in adulthood. (Photo by Ellen Kent)

The week rounded off with the 5th Annual COPH Cookout & Potluck at USF Riverfront Park. The COPH’s faculty, staff and students brought their families with them to enjoy an afternoon of conversation and good food with their peers.

Students, faculty, staff and their families enjoyed the sun and breeze at USF’s Riverfront Park for the annual COPH cookout and potluck. (Photo by Natalie Preston)

USF COPH’s 5th Annual BBQ and Potluck group photo. (Photo by Ellen Kent)

For more photos from this year’s National Public Health Week, view Ellen Kent’s montage.

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

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USF College of Public Health’s Dr. Claudia Parvanta, professor of community and family, says her newest book on health communication is filled with real-world examples.

Parvanta and her colleagues, Drs. David Nelson and Richard Harner, wrote the book “Public Health Communication Critical Tools and Strategies,” for doctoral and master’s students to complement the Essential Public Health series published by Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Published in 2018, it discusses what future practitioners should know when communicating about health, and prepares students for entry level positions in public health, health communication, health promotion, social marketing and community health education.

“What’s different about our book is that we devote several chapters to communicating about data, which is where most practitioners begin their careers,” Parvanta said. “How do you report science? How do you transform numbers into information for the public, for policy makers, or even for health care practitioners? That’s the foundation. We also cover health literacy and, of course, behavior change communication.”

Parvanta said the book also provides the background students need to create a communication strategy step-by-step, and shows how this varies when doing policy and advocacy, patient-provider communication, and emergency communication.

“If the only communication book you owned was this one, you could still do a lot of public health communication,” she said. “It’s written at a higher level, but it’s practical.”

Parvanta said she felt like a museum curator during the process of writing the book, noting and collecting exemplary health communication from public health practitioners working in the field.

“It was fun to see something just breaking at a conference, contact the author and ask if they would be willing to provide it [as an example],” she said.

The book has more than 10 chapter contributors and at least 15 case study contributors.

“So many people contributed to this book,” she said. “This is a real Who’s Who for both academia and private sector communication. You’re getting a lot of great resources here.”

Parvanta, who also serves as director of the Florida Prevention Research Center, previously headed the Division of Health Communication at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, helping the agency expand its emergency communication capacity following the 9/11 attacks, anthrax and SARS.

Claudia Parvanta, PhD. (Photo by Anna Mayor)

She’s also worked with the Los Angeles Public Health Foundation WIC program as their consulting anthropologist and with Porter/Novelli, a leading social marketing company.

She said her prior work experiences helped in writing this book.

“I’m an anthropologist, I never formally studied health communication,” Parvanta said. “Everything I learned was on the job. I think it makes me a really good student of the subject because I learned from the best at USAID, NCI, Porter/Novelli, and CDC—­­­where my boss was a leading health communication researcher, Vicki Freimuth. Learning how to learn about health communication gives me an appreciation of what students might find difficult to understand. It also doesn’t hurt that my daughter, Sara Parvanta, went on to get her PhD in Health Communication at the Annenberg School at U Penn. I learned a lot from her, as well.”

She acknowledges social marketing is her guiding star in health communication.

“Social marketing is using everything we know about commercial marketing and applying it to socially beneficial issues,” she said. “Communication is one tool of social marketing, but it is a power tool.”

Parvanta said her public health passion has always been helping people develop culturally appropriate ways of living healthier lives. 

“Don’t try to impose an intervention on people,” she said. “You have to really understand and respect them and get their input to design something that is appropriate for them. That’s the anthropologist in me talking, but it’s also the soul of social marketing.”

To learn more about the book or purchase a copy, visit Jones & Bartlett Learning. Copies are also available at the USF Bookstore.

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health 

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