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The Role of Marketing in Population Health: Part 2

By Susan Dubuque posted 08-14-2018 04:27 PM

  
This is the second in a three-part series of blogs presenting examples from around the country of how health care marketers and communicators are playing an integral role in deploying effective and innovative population health strategies for their organizations.

An Ounce of Prevention
The World Health Organization challenges us all to take the concepts of health up a notch by focusing not merely on the absence of disease but rather on a “state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being.”

We’re all aware that keeping people well and out of the hospital will be an imperative for health care organizations in the future. Of course, we will continue to care for individuals experiencing acute illness or injury. But, like the World Health Organization, we must embrace a more holistic view of health—with prevention serving as the centerpiece.

With just a bit of consideration, it’s easy to see how marketers can actively participate—in fact, play a vital role—in prevention efforts. We’ll start by examining the levels of prevention that might be employed to meet the needs of different populations and different health issues.

First, there is primary prevention. Sometimes referred to as “upstream,” this is “prevention” in the most literal sense of the word. Here individuals are avoiding a health problem altogether or nipping it in the bud before it has a chance to develop into an illness or disease. Primary prevention is typically aimed at a population as a whole, such as mass immunization against infectious diseases. Sometimes primary prevention happens at a societal, policy, or environmental level, such as legislation to ban smoking in public areas and construction of bike lanes in a community to facilitate cycling.

pophealth-triangle.pngSecondary prevention measures are designed to identify and treat individuals who have significant risk factors for a disease or those with an existing medical condition that has yet to produce symptoms. The goal is early intervention to arrest or slow the progress of disease and prevent recurrence or disability.

Tertiary prevention may seem like an oxymoron since it centers on individuals with serious, chronic medical conditions like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, HIV/AIDS and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. At this stage, individuals are concentrating on preventing further physical decline or disability.

Here are examples of the three levels of prevention put into action by health systems and the role marketing and communications played in establishing and promoting them.

Primary Prevention
Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Plymouth in Massachusetts leads the Healthy Plymouth Opportunities Program (HPOP), which is dedicated to providing middle school and high school students with after-school activities and summer jobs. The program was designed to reduce risk-taking behaviors, such as alcohol and drug use, that are often associated with idle time and boredom.

A HPOP job fair resulted in 53 students being hired for summer jobs. But the most exciting outcome of this program was the creation of five community gardens, engaging 260 youth as well as a number of adult volunteers in healthy activities.

The Marketing and Communications Department developed all internal and external communications to help the group promote HPOP, and assisted the program volunteers with event organization and management.

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Secondary Prevention
Tidelands Health in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, successfully used a secondary prevention strategy by identifying patients at risk for diabetes and steering them to a low-cost medical fitness program. The marketing staff worked with the clinical team to design the program, and then created and implemented a customer relationship management (CRM) campaign that generated 184 appropriate referrals to the Stronger Through Movement program over a 12-month period.

Participants in the two-month fitness program achieved significant health benefits, including: average weight loss of 9.4 pounds, average decrease in body mass index of 1.54, average decrease in waist circumference of 1.2 inches, and physical activity increased to an average of 147 minutes per week.

This initiative clearly demonstrates that population health improvement and marketing objectives are not mutually exclusive. Fifty percent of the participants converted to a paid program, generating approximately $39,000 in revenue, which more than covered the $30,000 cost of the campaign. In addition, the number of ER visits dropped from an average of 1.5 to 1.3 per participant, and the number of inpatient and outpatient hospital visits declined from an average of 5.92 to 4.65 during the six months after the participants joined the program.

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Tertiary Prevention

VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia, has a rich history in population health. Since 2000, the health system’s Virginia Coordinated Care program has served 85,000 low-income adults. These “super-utilizers” of health care services have multiple and complex medical problems. The program, established with private sector grant funding, was designed to improve health while reducing unnecessary ER visits and hospitalizations through preventive measures.

Each patient enrolled in the program receives primary care services as well as intensive case management and care coordination. The results are impressive. Over a three-year period, the average cost per patient has been cut nearly in half, from $8,899 to $4,569, and non-urgent ER visits and inpatient admissions have declined significantly. The marketing team at VCU Health supported this initiative through communication and promotional efforts.
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Watch for part 3 of this special Viewpoint blog series next month. Read part 1 here.

By Susan Dubuque | Posted August 14, 2018

Principal and co-founder
ndp
Richmond, Virginia

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