LA County Department of Public Health
Community Health Worker Outreach Initiative
Team Friday developed and implemented a plan to create culturally relevant assets and brand extensions for the Community Health Worker Outreach Initiative utilizing research, social listening, and ongoing feedback from Community Health Worker (CHW) participants, Community Based Organizations (CBO) members, and Department of Public Health officials.
RESEARCH
We organized and deployed paid-research surveys, social listening, and direct feedback sessions with CHW and CBO members. Through this we aggregated community sentiment and uncovered misinformation and myths to be addressed. We also tested messaging, approach and tactics, and surfaced communications and outreach ideas directly from LA County residents and advocates within the community.
STRATEGY
This work focused COVID-19 communications efforts to unique populations within highly-impacted communities, including geographic and audience-specific needs. Capacity building is key to the success of a tailored communications plan, allowing the messengers to craft their messages to fit their unique needs and audience.
TACTICS
A large part of our work was paid media strategy to reach audiences that typically are not connected with the County Department of Public Health, including youth, LatinX, food, and agriculture. We identified storytelling opportunities for CHWs and CBOs to highlight their work in the community to further the engagement with trusted messengers. We connected community resources with different opportunities within DPH and the County, including the street vendor videos that were created for the vaccine effort. Subsequently, through this initiative, we were able to provide Contact Tracing resources in multiple languages to the CBO Equity Fund.
TRAININGS
Team Friday developed and hosted two training sessions for the DPH CHW and CBO Outreach Initiative leads, Media Training 101 and Social Media Training 101. The social media training focused on defining a successful social media plan, how to make an elevator speech for in-person and digital platforms, and how to create content from the talking points provided by DPH. This training supported participants in their outreach using their voices and style to reach their community members. The media training focused on media interviews and included best practices, public speaking, and ways to use these skills to reach out to the community. The timing of this training coincided with a particular CBO’s interviews with the LA Times, broadening the story and conversation about the heroes of the pandemic and the work of CHW and the LA County Department of Public Health.
