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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After a long career as a public high school math teacher, USF College of Public Health (COPH) alumnus Daniel Carella plans to retire next year and focus on growing his nonprofit, Relief Share, full time.

Carella started Relief Share in 2003 while teaching international baccalaureate math at Lecanto High School in Lecanto, Fla. Combining student volunteerism and service learning with medical surplus recovery, Relief Share provides quality service-learning opportunities for students.

After he began collecting surplus supplies for the nonprofit, Carella partnered with charity organizations in Miami and Tampa that would take the donated supplies and ship them to places where they were most needed, such as Haiti and other locations around the world.

“One charity in Tampa, CardioStart International, has been shipping supplies all over the world since the 1980s,” Carella said. “We made a connection with them, and the founder has come to talk to students here and I would bring students there, to Tampa, and they would load cargo bins with surplus from the hospitals in Tampa.”

Carella’s was directly influenced to start the nonprofit while attending the COPH as graduate student. He was introduced to the field while visiting his brother in Gabon, Africa.

“I spent two months visiting my brother who was serving as a Peace Corps volunteer. I was able to meet many volunteers who had roles as public health educators. Meeting with volunteers and being able to drive the entire country and observe the obvious health disparities helped me to see the lack of public health in certain areas,” he said.

In 2001, Carella decided to go back to school to earn his online MPH from the COPH.

“I was an older student, already in my late 40s with two children at home while being three counties away teaching high school full time,” he said. “Time away was a bit of a sacrifice, but it was completely worth the benefits.”

Carella said that the public health practice concentration was a great fit for him.

“I was able to take at least one course in just about every other concentration from epidemiology to global health to health informatics,” he said. “They have all proved highly useful for Relief Share’s nonprofit mission of responding to health care and natural disaster response needs in the developing world.”

While starting his nonprofit, he also helped found the USF Health International Health Service Collaborative (IHSC) in 2005.

“The inaugural IHSC trip was to Peguche, Ecuador. It was an effort started by USF Morsani College of Medicine alum Dr. Samuel Crane. On this trip, about 30 USF Health students traveled for a week to Peguche on a public health mission that included health screenings, administering anti-parasite medications, and working on a water system repair for a system serving six villages in the region,” he said. “I was starting Relief Share at this time, and in conjunction with this trip, I was able to coordinate over 30 boxes of medical surplus to be taken as cargo on our flight. I worked with IHSC officers to arrange for each graduate student to dedicate one of their two allowed luggage pieces to be a box of Relief Share medical donations from a Florida hospital.”

After graduation, Carella continued his career as a math teacher and mentor while also expanding Relief Share.

“Relief Share has grown to sponsor many student service-learning projects, including sending medical surplus, family health kits and high-protein prepackaged meals to regions overseas affected by natural disasters and to migrant worker families here in Florida,” he said. “Since 2010, I have served as club director of the rotary-sponsored interact service-learning club helping students earn community service hours required for graduation, scholarships and entrance into top tier colleges and universities.”

Most recently, Carella has been working to provide aid to Ukraine, even traveling to Poland to deliver the surplus medical supplies himself.

“On my June trip to Poland, I was able to make friends there and now know the customs process well. I feel I’m in a much better position to get donations to recipients and hospitals there that have already thanked us,” he said. “I also want Relief Share to get back to our original mission also of helping improve health care in developing countries, especially closer to Florida and Latin America. Finally, I’m hoping Relief Share can expand our pre-packaged rice and soy protein meals for delivery in aftermath of natural disasters and to the highest food insecure areas.”

After his retirement, Carella is excited to continue expanding and  growing Relief Share.

“I have one more year of teaching. After that, I intend to grow my nonprofit and work to expand the number of hospitals we collect from. Since I won’t be working directly with the students at Lecanto High School, I’m planning to build a broader base of community volunteers to help with sorting, monitoring inventory and packing medical surplus,” he said. “This could include current and retired health professionals, university students and many of the hundreds of alumni students I’ve worked with over the years.”

COPH Alumni Fast Five:

What did you dream of becoming when you were young? 

Growing up in New Jersey, I became interested in improving environmental health, so environmental science is what interested me the most. I began an environmental science track at Rollins, but then decided on a career in teaching.

Where would we find you on the weekend? 

At the Relief Share warehouse, with volunteers sorting/taking inventory of medical donations or on a long bike ride, in a pool exercising, or working on a home garden

What is the last book you read? 

“The Reconstruction of Nations,” by Timothy Snyder

What superpower would you like to have? 

Empathy (I didn’t know it’s also a superpower).

What’s your all-time favorite movie?  

I only recently saw “CODA,” and right after thought this may be the best movie I’ve ever seen.

Story by Caitlin Keough, USF College of Public Health

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A first of its kind in the state of Florida, the USF College of Public Health began offering a MPH concentration in nutrition and dietetics to students in 2016.

The MPH concentration in nutrition and dietetics has two components: the online MPH in nutrition and dietetics and the integrated MPH/dietetic internship.

The MPH in nutrition and dietetics on-line program examines medical nutrition therapy, nutrition education, community practice and program evaluation, management and leadership, ethical standards and practice, and theoretical frameworks and models. 

Students who complete the program, in conjunction with an accredited dietetic internship by the Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics (ACEND) and successfully pass the registration exam for dietitians, can practice as a registered dietitian nutritionist in multiple areas of population health.

The integrated MPH/dietetic internship is a 20-month program that requires a minimum of 1,200 hours of supervised practicum falling into three categories: clinical, community and food service.

Clinical rotation partners include Tampa General Hospital, Moffitt Cancer Center and John Hopkins All Children’s Hospital. Food service experiences will also take place at Tampa General Hospital.

However, it’s the population health focus and international experience that Dr. Theresa Crocker, assistant professor and director of the nutrition and dietetic program, says sets the program apart from others.

“We have a public health focus and population health frame for it,” Crocker said. “So, interns get to do a lot of unique rotations, for example they intern at Meals on Wheels, Feeding Tampa Bay, The Dairy Council, USF Student Health Services, the Florida Department of Health, Geriatric Wellness and Research Week, and with registered dietitians who are entrepreneurs in private practice.”

According to Crocker, the profession as a whole is moving toward requiring a minimum of a master’s degree for entry level positions, and soon will require a graduate degree to sit for the registration exam.

“We are well ahead of the curve already, having an integrated program, because our graduates will not only have an MPH and CPH, but will be able to sit for the registration examination for registered dietitian nutritionists,” she said.

 “Our graduates are not only graduating prepared to be entry level registered dietitian nutritionists, they are going to have that core MPH foundation as well, so they’ll be really ready to go out there and transform practice with what they have learned,” Crocker said.

Starting strong, the second cohort of students have graduated with 12 students completing the integrated MPH/dietetic internship and an additional 12 completing the online MPH concentration in nutrition and dietetics. All graduates are now registered dietitians with their MPH and CPH working in a range of places including USF and other universities, Tampa General, Veterans Administration, Aramark, Bon Apetit and more.

The nutrition and dietetics program had a recent site visit for full accreditation in October with results pending and anticipated in August 2020.  

For the future, the college is working to expand undergraduate nutrition and dietetic offerings. Crocker hopes to eventually expand the current graduate offerings so that the college can serve a broader range of student’s in the future.

Related media:

USF offers first Florida programs in genetic counseling and nutrition

It’s a match for USF Dietetic Internship-MPH

New COPH grads welcomed into “a noble profession”

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The USF College of Public Health’s online master of public health program has been ranked number one on the list of the top 50 best online MPH programs across the country, according to the Master’s Programs Guide.

Master’s Programs Guide, an online guide to helping students discover master’s programs in any specialty, ranked the programs based on school reputation, affordability, program accreditation and accessibility/flexibly.

The USF COPH’s program ranked first place ahead of programs at the University of Nebraska, University of Illinois at Chicago, Michigan State University, University of Florida, Johns Hopkins University, and Emory.

The COPH has been offering distance-based MPH programs for nearly 30 years, according to Dean Donna Petersen, and offers seven distinct specializations, including a DrPH program and 13 online graduate certificates.

“We recognize that our students’ time is valuable and also that we have an obligation to provide the best educational training possible for those interested in public health careers, regardless of the delivery modality,” Petersen said. “Our faculty embraced this technology early on and we’ve built an exceptional team of instructional technology and design professionals. Students in our on-line programs often tell me that they have been able to use what they learned in class immediately in their work settings or that they could never have obtained the MPH degree if an online option weren’t available.”

Students may customize their degree experience by focusing on the following specializations: epidemiology, public health practice, global disaster management, humanitarian relief and homeland security, infection control, social marketing, nutrition and dietetics, and health, safety and environment.

“This recognition affirms what we, our students and our alumni already know–that the USF College of Public Health online MPH programs are a great value and provide an excellent learning experience,” Petersen said.

To learn more about the COPH’s accredited distance-based MPH programs, visit the admissions website.

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

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Kelley Dennings is making history as the founding president of the Social Marketing Association of North America (SMANA), a membership-based organization spanning the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

Dennings, a graduate student in the USF College of Public Health online public health practice program, said SMANA officially launched in June 2016 at the USF Social Marketing Conference.

Kelley Dennings. (Photo courtesy of Dennings)

Previously working at a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., Dennings said she was on the hunt for more interaction with other social marketers in the area, so she reached out to the International Social Marketing Association to establish a networking event.

Those events became quarterly meetings, helping to thrust Dennings into the role of founding president of the newly formed SMANA, a role she will hold for at least a year.

“The international group was hoping for a midlevel association they could start, so I was asked to help build the North American group,” she said.

Dennings worked with colleagues throughout 2015 and early 2016 to outline the structure and overall goal of SMANA.

“We work to connect practitioners, academics and students within North America to each other to build a stronger legacy and community of practice and disseminate best practices in social marketing,” she said. “We want to advocate for the advancement of social marketing and facilitate opportunities for organizations and stakeholders to learn from each other, and provide assurance that social marketing efforts are scientifically rigorous and informed by practice.”

SMANA now has more than 100 members representing 19 states and Canada, according to Dennings, and is open to students for a discounted price.

Dennings said that with the help of three interns, who are current and past students at the USF COPH, SMANA has been able to establish a website, fundraise, and build a strategic plan and vision for the future.

“Imagine starting a new business, that’s essentially what we’re doing,” she said.

Social marketing uses marketing principles to influence a health behavior or change in the public through promotion of products, programs or interventions, according to the CDC.

Dennings said that she has always had an interest in promoting change and her new role will allow her to do so.

“I really wanted to make a difference in the world and [this role] provides a very concrete framework to be able to do that, one in which I feel I’m better at than, say, lobbying or other ways I could be making change in the world,” she said.

Dennings, an alumna of NC State with a bachelor’s degree in environmental science, said her interest in public health grew even more after obtaining a social marketing certificate in 2014 from USF.

For the social marketing project she conducted with Keep America Beautiful, Dennings and colleagues worked to provide recycling bins and held a recycling competition. (Photo courtesy of Kelley Dennings)

She’s worked on campaigns for Keep America Beautiful to promote recycling in school systems, and she is currently living in Washington, DC, working for a social marketing agency called Action Research, focusing on community-based social marketing.

Dennings said she hopes to continue pushing for social marketing efforts in the future.

“My dream job would be to work at the intersection of health, environment and social change,” she said. “With the goal of population based prevention programs, social marketing lends itself to that because in the end we really need more people to stop smoking, eating more healthy, exercise more; it really comes down to an individual choice and I think social marketing can support those choices.”

To learn more about SMANA or to join, visit smana.org.

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

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“I found I loved public health policy almost as much as social marketing,” said MPH graduate, Julie Hentz.

Hentz graduated May 6 with a master of public health degree from the USF College of Public Health.

She made the jump from advertising to public health after working for years in advertising with companies, such as J. Walter Thomas, Mayo Clinic and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hentz said her interest in public health stems from its potential for prevention of human suffering and mortality from disease.

“I owned my own small advertising company,” said Hentz. “I was offered a position at CDC, which sounded very interesting and attractive. There I was able to move my knowledge and experience in corporate marketing theory, and my practice to health prevention awareness and behavior change.”

Hentz pictured (middle) while working with New Mexico Dept. of Health and Indian Health Service of Navajo. (Photo courtesy of Julie Hentz)

Hentz’s introduction to academic life began early on—born in Raleigh, N.C. she spent her childhood moving to whatever college town her father’s career as a professor happened to take them. From North Carolina State, Hentz went to Princeton University to the University of Notre Dame.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in English and creative writing, as well as her bachelor’s in fine arts, from Indiana University, in 1983. Hentz later completed her associate’s degree in visual communications from the Art Institute of Atlanta, before landing at the University of South Florida, where she completed a graduate certificate in social marketing in 2013.

Her journey as a student definitely would not be characterized as easy—between family responsibilities, death, working and life in general, Hentz seemed to have curveballs thrown at her left and right.

“I lost both of my parents during this time, I sold the house that I raised my children in, and moved to D.C. with two dogs and three birds,” she said.

Despite the challenges and full schedule, Hentz still found the time to participate in professional activities and associations, including the International Association of Social Marketing.

Hentz also returns to USF every other June, despite living in D.C., for the Social Marketing Conference, where she has the opportunity to catch up with staff and colleagues.

When selecting a university for her public health education, she said it was a clear choice for her—USF was not only rated within the top 20 public health universities in the U.S., but boasted many benefits she could utilize.

“CDC had an agreement with USF that provided CDC staff with in-state tuition to pursue their MPH,” said Hentz. “I also knew they were the leader in social marketing in this country.”

Currently, Hentz works with IQ Solutions, a Washington-based public health organization, as the director of social issue marketing. There, she applies her education from COPH to real time projects, directs all corporate and social marketing activities, and utilizes her education about epidemiology, infectious disease and policies.

“I value having the opportunity to work on a variety of public health topics,” said Hentz. “We work with the FDA on dashboards related to youth tobacco cessation and prevention, AARP and Healthy People 2020 on web development and design work, NIDA and NIAMS, NICHD on maternal child health, Robert Wood Johnson on Human Capital Campaign; my days are full of a broad array of health promotion and prevention efforts.”

Outside of her academic pursuits, Hentz likes anything related to the outdoors or new adventures—bike riding, gardening, traveling, you name it—just give her some fresh air and a map!

Hentz (pictured lower right) with family on a four-day hike with children through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. (Photo courtesy of Julie Hentz)

“I’ve been a runner and competitor in races around the country for 32 years,” she said. “Learning new things is fulfilling to me. I will study Italian at the Center for Italian Studies here in D.C. when I have free time.”

Once she masters Italian, Hentz has no intention of stopping.

“I plan to move toward creating a consultancy in social marketing approaches to native health promotion in the near future,” she said. “I am devoted to health equity.”

Backed by a wealth of education, motivation, and experience, Hentz is more than prepared to leave her mark on the world—both social marketing and public health.

Story by Shelby Bourgeois, USF College of Public Health

The post Julie Hentz uses social marketing to spotlight public health issues appeared first on College of Public Health News.

The USF College of Public Health has announced a social marketing concentration for its master of public health degree.  To date, no other U.S. institution has offered an MPH in social marketing.

Dr. Carol Bryant, USF Distinguished Health Professor in the Department of Community and Family Health, has championed social marketing for two decades.  The notion of a social marketing MPH concentration isn’t new, she said, but implementation took longer than some might have expected.

“For many years, I resisted the suggestion that we make it a concentration, because I’ve always seen social marketing as a planning framework or planning approach that is different from a discipline,” 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.

“I’ve encouraged students who are interested in social marketing to go into health education, MCH, socio-health or something else that reflects the general topics that they’re interested in pursuing,” she said, “but what I’ve learned since we started the conference – and social marketing really started to take off – is that more and more people really want to focus on social marketing as exclusively their expertise in how to bring about social change.”

Carol Bryant, PhD

The distinction, Bryant said, is a matter of emphasis – a social marketer who knows global health, for example, versus a global health expert who knows social marketing.  As she put together the social marketing certificate in response to a growing demand for a credential, she said she began to see larger possibilities.

“As I looked at the requirements, it seemed to me that there was enough to learn in social marketing to fill out all of the coursework they need to get an MPH,” she said.  “As long as they want to focus on public health and not something like environmental protection or health education, then it does make sense for them to take all our core courses or our new modules to be public health professionals and then dig deep into the expertise they need to be good social marketers.”

That expertise would have served Bryant well in her early endeavors in health education.  A pioneer not only of social marketing in particular and public health in general, she knows first-hand the value of proper preparation.

“Health education, since I’ve been in public health, has really changed,” she explained.  “When I was deputy commissioner in Lexington, Ky., almost all the health educators I hired were so poorly trained I almost wrote the whole discipline off.  But the field has really developed to become quite sophisticated, and it’s almost a model for us as social marketers to make sure that, when you do hire somebody to be a social marketer, you know what you’re getting.  We want our graduates to know the marketing mix, a variety of social change theories, a variety of ways to pump up design in social marketing intervention, behavior change policy or system dynamics modeling.”

The four courses required for the social marketing certificate will form the core course requirement for the social marketing MPH, Bryant said.  Electives in a major area of interest will round out the coursework, and a social marketing field experience also will be required.  No new courses are planned yet, Bryant said, but she hopes that will change.

“My long-term dream would be that this takes off and generates enough funding that we not only find another fulltime faculty member to replace me when I retire, but that we’re able to add elective offerings,” she said.  “For example, behavioral economics would be a great thing if we had somebody who could teach a whole course in that.  It would be a great thing for social marketers to know more about.”

Bryant also mentioned recent collaborative work with humanitarian engineers in the College of Engineering.

“We’re working very closely with them,” she said, “and they may have us do a minor for their engineers.  That could turn into an incredible discipline, because engineers know how to make things.  Social marketers know how to help engineers design them so that people can get them and use them better.”

Bryant said she’s planning to apply for a grant that, should the funds be awarded, would meld the collective efforts of social marketing, anthropology and engineering to provide hand pumps for water and cooking stoves (“that won’t give people COPD,” she specified) for people living “off the grid.”

“We – the social marketers and Dr. Linda Whiteford, our anthropologist who’s becoming a social marketer, too – would work with the engineers to do the on-the-ground research to determine who needs these things and determine their cultural preferences. Then, the engineers would design them.

“With most of these technologies, the real important thing would be to find the people in-country, in those communities, who already sell products to sell these products, so that we don’t displace the local economy with something shipped in from the outside.  We’d actually design something, then train those distributors and creators to make it and distribute it, install it and, when necessary, fix it.”

Excited about the world of possibilities within the scope of the new concentration, Bryant can’t help but think about how far social marketing has come in a relatively short time.

“When we first started this discussion in 1990, when we started the conference, people thought, ‘Marketing?  That’s so manipulative.  We’re in public health.  We’re passionate do-gooders.  You may say it’s social, but you’re marketers.’  We’ve come a long way since, although there still are people who get nervous about the use of ‘marketing’ in our title.”

The MPH social marketing concentration will be available through a fully online curriculum or a blended online/on-campus option.  Bryant expects it to first appear in the catalog this fall, but students may submit paperwork now to switch concentrations. The first two students are expected this summer.

Story by David Brothers, College of Public Health.

The post Social marketing concentration a national first for COPH appeared first on College of Public Health News.

The phone rings at 6pm on a Monday. It’s a call from the University of South Florida.

Answer or voice mail?

“Hi, I’m calling from the USF College of Public Health to share how much we appreciate your gift this year.”

Spending a couple of hours on the telephone may not appeal to most folks, but a group of USF Bulls recently seized the opportunity.

Why?

To thank more than 200 alumni, faculty, staff, and friends who gave a charitable donation to the USF College of Public Health in 2013.

For Lisa Conder, Brittney Devallon, Infiniti Mincey, Dana Giandomenico, and Emily Henderson the evening would prove to be an interesting one. It began with dinner and a debriefing on what to expect.

Lisa Conder (far left), Dana Giandomenico (far right), and Emily Henderson (not pictured) are graduate students in the College of Public Health. Undergraduates Brittney Devallon (2nd from left) and Infiniti Mincey (center) are studying public health and pre-med, respectively. Deena Kemp (2nd from right) hosted the group on behalf of USF Health Development.

“Given the time of day, you will get some hang ups and maybe encounter a few grumps,” said Deena Kemp, associate director of stewardship and communications for USF Health. “However, once people learn you aren’t asking for money and only want to thank them for their gift, the tone of the call should improve.”

The student callers shared how a donation impacts the future of public health, keeps the college moving forward, and a few points of pride.

• Leading the way in distance-based education, the college offers seven master’s degrees in an online or executive weekend format, as well as 11 graduate certificates. Starting in 2014, the DrPH and bachelor of science in public health will be available in a blended format. Currently, more than 5,000 students are enrolled in online courses

• If you haven’t heard, there’s a strong undercurrent moving through the college. With more than 800 majors and 600 minors, public health undergrads are engaged in research, service to the community, and are quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with

• As a catalyst for health, we established an international hub in Panama and are extending our reach into Ecuador and Kenya; USF’s Peace Corps Master’s International Program—which includes public health and engineering—is one of the top five in the nation; Since 2008, more than 180 students traveled abroad for field experience; And, we recently launched field schools, in Malaysia and Belize

“In this economic climate it’s especially important to acknowledge supporters for their donation,” Kemp said. “The thank-a-thon serves that purpose while giving students and alumni an opportunity to connect .”

After a few minutes of stimulating conversation about all things public health, the students paused to answer questions about the college, update the person’s contact info, and invited them to connect with the COPH via Facebook and LinkedIN.

“The fall thank-a-thon was a great experience!,” said Lisa Conder, a graduate student in global health practice.  “The best part was being able to connect with USF graduates …”

“One person I called said she was surprised at receiving a thank you call and it made her day. I let her know her kindness and generosity made my day and many other students as well.”

The five students made 231 calls in two hours and they still didn’t reach all of the college’s donors for 2013.

Didn’t receive a call?

Well, Lisa, Brittney, Infiniti, Dana, and Emily want to share, “The college’s success is possible because of awesome people like you! Thanks for supporting OUR College of Public Health and have a wonderful week.”

To learn more about giving opportunities with the USF College of Public Health, click here.

The post We thank YOU for suppporting the USF COPH in 2013 appeared first on College of Public Health News.

Her top food choice is spaghetti and meatballs, she lives in Temple Terrace, and wishes that no parent experiences the death of a child …

She’s Kathleen O’Rourke, PhD, a professor of epidemiology and the new chair of the USF College of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

“I love the diversity of public health, and addressing health problems in communities,” O’Rourke said. “I feel like we have the opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of people.”

In 2004, Dr. O’Rourke joined the college as an associate professor and research director at the Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies. As a perinatal epidemiologist, her research interests include maternal and child health, as well as reproductive outcomes of PTSD, community-based health, and immigrant issues in reproductive health.

Her role in leading a landmark NIH Children’s Health Study for USF is an early example of O’Rourke’s practice and passion—the translation of MCH research into communities. More recently, she submitted a grant to evaluate an iPhone app on asthma control by adolescents to the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), a group dedicated to helping people with their health-care decisions and improving health care delivery and outcomes by producing evidence-based information from research.

When asked about her hopes for the department, she identified three overarching goals:

“First, the department has so many incredibly talented people, and EPI/BIO can serve as an important resource in this time of tight funding as the faculty here can provide expertise in study design and analysis that increase the likelihood of funding across COPH and USF as a whole.

Second, I want to increase our role in cross-disciplinary research, as well as continue with current research in the department.

Third, we know our teaching role will increase with growing enrollments and the newly created online MPH in epidemiology.  Ideally, I would like to be able to increase the size of the department to meet the growing needs I see for epidemiology and biostatistics faculty at the COPH.”

A native of Malden, Massachusetts, located just outside of Boston, Dr. O’Rourke completed her masters and doctoral programs at the University of Massachusetts.

Although not formally trained as a techie, she confesses that tinkering around on the computer keeps her up at night. From chairing the college’s committee charged with transforming the MPH to transforming presentations using Prezi, “I’m very busy, but find that I am so engaged by the work I do that the hours just fly by,” O’Rourke said.

Just one example of a Prezi Dr. O’Rourke created to introduce epidemiology and biostatistics to incoming students.

When she is not in the classroom teaching, you can find O’Rourke gardening or embroidering with vibrant hues. When possible, she likes to incorporate her interpretation of nature and events into her work.

“Color drives my hobbies,” she admits. “I have made quilts with lights integrated into the design, better for wall hangings that beds perhaps!”

In an e-mail to the college community, Donna J. Petersen, ScD, MHS, interim senior vice president of USF Health and dean of the College of Public Health, thanked “ … Dr. O’Rourke for providing leadership for the department and, as part of the executive committee, for the College going forward.”

“I am optimistic about our future and know that working together, anything is possible,” Petersen said.

Speaking of anything being possible, O’Rourke’s dream job is “designing miniature golf-courses for Disney.”

She looks forward to working for the Big Mouse one day, but is quite happy designing online courses and mapping out opportunities for the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the meantime.

Dr. O’Rourke replaces Heather G. Stockwell, ScD who recently retired after a long and successful career with USF and the College of Public Health.  Since 2002, she served as chair of the department and professor of epidemiology.

Story by Infiniti Mincey and Natalie D. Preston, USF College of Public Health

The post Dr. Kathleen O’Rourke chosen to lead epidemiology and biostatistics appeared first on College of Public Health News.

Professionals around the world have access to an online USF master’s degree in environmental health and safety, and graduates of the program are helping meet the ever-growing demand around the world for qualified environmental health and safety professionals.

This win/win scenario is thanks to an online Master of Public Health (MPH) degree in Health Safety and Environment (HSE) based in the USF College of Public Health, a new program that has attracted applicants from other states and other countries. The HSE concentration focuses on preventing incidents or accidents that might result from abnormal operating conditions and reducing adverse effects that come from normal operating conditions, as well as understanding the relevant regulatory requirements and their implications.

Alison Oberne, MA, MPH, CPH, an instructor in the USF College of Public Health, narrates a lecture for an undergraduate public health course using the recording space in COPH used for recording content for the lectures and modules of most of the College’s online degree programs.

“Heavy industry has moved out of the United States and dirty industries are growing in foreign countries, which have little regulation,” said Steve Mlynarek, PhD, CIH, QEP, professor of occupational and environmental health at the USF College of Public Health. “There is a lack of trained professionals in those countries to tackle the current and impending problems. We need to train more.”

Student applicants represent India, South America and Central America, and reflect today’s savvy student who seeks quality education from an institution with a strong reputation, Dr. Mlynarek said.

Dr. Steve Mlynarek

“Environmental health is an important aspect of public health and traditionally we had campus-based programs, but needs have changed, and we have developed an exceptional online program to reach people worldwide,” he said.

Robert Meyer is one such student.

Based in Houston, TX, Meyer was looking for a quality degree program that would help propel his career, but he didn’t have the flexibility to move. The USF MPH in HSE stood out among the many other online courses he saw.

“My main reasons for selecting USF are because it is a prestigious school, and it can create great opportunities for me residing in Houston, TX, with the big oil industry as a future HSE specialist,” Meyer said. “I currently am working and the scheduling is vital for me due to the flexibility.”

The HSE degree program is one of several offered online by the USF College of Public Health, a pioneer in providing online degrees and remote access to public health education.

“We’re the only college of public health founded by legislative order and our founding mandate is to train the workforce in Florida,” said Jay Evans, MBA MPH, associate dean for Finance, Operations and Human Resources at USF COPH. “Well, now we’re expanding the borders of Florida and even beyond the country. We’re expanding the university’s reach and ability to train public health professionals and it’s all being done in-house, right here.”

In support of the legislative mandate, the USF COPH was among the first schools of public health to offer a distance-based MPH program. The College partnered with Florida Department of Health to deliver this MPH through satellite technologies to more than 30 satellite host sites within the state and country. This early effort quickly established USF as a leader in distance learning and public health education.

The newly offered Health Safety and Environment online concentration was built from scratch and is based on the current curriculum for on-campus courses.

And there is no real cap on how many students can be accepted.

The bottom line is that the online HSE degree is helping both the professional in the health and safety industry and industry itself.

“There needs to be more professionals trained in environmental health and safety to meet the demand worldwide,” Dr. Mlynarek said.

“This knowledge and understanding achieved by earning this degree advances careers and creates safer work environments.”

Story by Sarah A. Worth, photos by Eric Younhans, USF Health Office of Communications

The post Public Health expands reach with new online master’s degree in Health Safety and Environment appeared first on College of Public Health News.