A recent campaign in Pittsburgh-area public schools has done more than help to remove the stigma associated with mental health issues among young people. For the nonprofit
Community Connections for Families, the campaign demonstrated the true value PR professionals bring to the table in their ability to gather and interpret input from a target
audience.
Working with $300,000 in federal grants, Community Connections for Families (CCF) set out last year to help local students, teachers and parents better understand and relate to
students who were dealing with mental health issues. The organization turned to Vanguard Communications, having already gotten to know the PR group through common ties with the
Federal government's Center for Mental Health Services.
Through preliminary discussions with parents and teachers, CCF had established the parameters of the problem. Kids used insensitive language toward their peers, while teachers
often failed to understand the problems associated with mental health. "There was a lot of blame being put on the parents: 'These kids are just this way because they have bad
parents. They are acting out because they have bad home lives,' " explains Becky Marquis, a senior account executive at Vanguard. While this information laid the groundwork for
the campaign the Vanguard team knew it needed a more detailed reading before it could devise the details of what would likely be a complex effort to change people's attitudes.
With the principles of social marketing in mind, the PR team initially met with the school principals to drum up support for the effort. The principals said they would be happy
to help, but with one caveat: The PR would have to offer follow-ups and support for the teachers. Too often, they said, well-meaning nonprofits came in with boxes full of teaching
materials, dropped them on teachers' desks and left.
The PR team then held small discussion groups with the teachers who would be charged with helping to change students' attitudes. These educators expressed a feeling of
helplessness. Their ranks were under-staffed; they didn't know much about mental-health issues and had signed on as teachers -- not counselors -- and didn't feel qualified to
handle the task of de-stigmatizing mental health.
The data from these focus groups had a dramatic effect on the direction of the overall campaign. "They made me a believer in audience research," says Gwen White, project
director for the federal grant to the Department of Human Services of Allegheny County, Pa., in support of the Allegheny County CCF. "They did their focus groups and came back
with really meaningful ideas about this campaign."
With focus group data in hand, the PR team set out to implement its strategy in what was a challenging campaign. "It's a very touchy issue. A lot of people don't like to talk
about it. We knew going in that there would be a lot of people who might not understand what mental health is," Marquis says.
The team developed a range of education tools, including a planner for teachers in grades six through eight, along with related discussion guides. For younger students, in
grades three through five, the PR team created a journal and discussion guide and for first-through-third-graders they offered an activity-and-coloring book.
In support of the teachers, the campaign offered an in-service training with psychologist Dr. Ken Nash of the University of Pittsburgh, along with a Web site (http://www.itsallaboutu.org). The Web site is intended to help overcome teachers' concerns about support. It includes definitions and
discussion questions, suggested activities and detailed contact information for local organizations that can help address issues of mental health.
The teachers received all the printed materials at the start of the school year (Sept. 2002), and the PR team followed up on the phone soon afterward with principals and
teachers to ensure that the educators had everything they needed. Still, the logistics proved to be even more of a challenge than Marquis had expected.
"It was hard to keep in touch with these people, because they are so busy during the day. There were a lot of unreturned phone calls," she says. Simultaneously, "A lot of them
looked at me as just being part of this PR firm in Washington, D.C., and that made it hard sometimes to maintain these relationships." To overcome this hurdle Marquis visited the
schools at least once a month, and coordinated the efforts of CCF staffers to ensure that they could be on site on a regular basis.
Outcomes are still being determined, through the dissemination of follow-up interviews and the tabulation of Web site hits. But the client is already satisfied. "We have had a
lot of feedback from family and youth in other districts saying how excited they are to try this idea," says White. She credits the success of the effort to the PR team's skilled
use of focus groups to cut through what people actually wanted. "In the end, we got something that reflected middle-school tastes, and not the tastes of an old social-service
bureaucrat. To me, that's invaluable."
Campaign staff: Senior Account Executive Becky Marquis; Senior Director Brenda Foster; Account Executive Erin Thacker; Art Director Ryan LaLonde' Senior Graphic Designer Sarah
Waters; Publications Coordinator/Editor Stacy Block; Writer Cody Mooneyhan
Contacts: Becky Marquis, 202.331.4323, [email protected]; Gwen White, 412.350.4944, [email protected]
Hitting the Books
Teachers are busy, resources are incredibly scarce. For its work in Pittsburgh-area schools, Vanguard Communications employed a number of techniques to overcome these
hurdles.
- Get early buy-in. The Vanguard team went to the principals to enlist their support, and then connected with teachers early on, before getting the campaign up and running.
- Offer printed materials: Workbooks, or coloring books for younger grades, plus lesson planners and other materials all encourage teachers to implement the program.
- Training is vital: A teacher in-service program will explain the basics of the campaign, and will offer educators the opportunity up front to ask questions. Since they are the
ones who will be disseminating the information to students, this will be a vital component.