Goal 1: Increase public awareness about the importance of prenatal care and early childhood development
Anticipated Impact
Increased awareness of the importance of gestation through age 2( First 1,000 Days) to a wide audience of parents, caregivers, healthcare providers, early care and education providers, and community partners. The significant impact created by increased awareness is the recognition that supports and services are both available and needed to support healthy pregnancies and care giving of infants, babies and young children. This can lead to the ultimate goal of reducing prematurity and toxic stress.
Strategy 1.1
Create universal awareness through public engagement and a shared messaging campaign.
Tactic: Message Development
Unlike other public health campaigns that aim to change one specific behavior, such as smoking or shaking a baby, this campaign is intended to broadly enhance and support parenting and caregiving skills and to reduce childhood exposure to adverse experiences. Children’ s Colorado will therefore need to invest significant time and resources in creating a compelling message. Additionally Children’ s Colorado should collaborate with other groups interested in pooling resources, increasing overall exposure and aligning messages for maximum impact and exposure. Ideally, the messages would include research-based frames developed by those with experience in early childhood development.
Tactic: Media Campaign
Paid Media- While paid media is an expensive medium for distributing public awareness messages, it can also be very effective. Ideally, a paid media campaign will include a mix of TV, radio and targeted social media buys to reach a broad audience.
Earned Media- Children’ s Colorado should find ample opportunity to work with both traditional media outlets and online media to tell the story of the importance of gestation through age 2. Key steps include identifying key influencers, developing press materials and pitching stories, and monitoring responses.
Owned Media – The second highest-rated tactic identified in the First 1,000 Days strategic planning process was to create a content-rich area of the Children’ s Colorado website with information about pregnancy, prematurity, early childhood development, toxic stress and positive parenting. Children’ s Colorado should utilize existing owned media to promote key messages identified in the message development process. This should extent to text-based‘ push’ messaging to capture audiences that use digital sources of information for guidance and support, as well as develop a comprehensive social media strategy.
Community Health Action Plan 39