Digital and social media strategies hold tremendous potential to educate audiences about children’ s mental health well beyond the auditorium that holds the Awareness Day national event. During multiple points in the national event, the hashtag # heroesofhope trended first in the Washington, DC, area.

Mental health-focused organizations, communities, and individuals were highly effective contributors to the social media effort. For example, the American Psychological Association( APA) hosted a Twitter chat“ Kids and Trauma: Partnering for Health and Hope” on May 9 that focused on how to make child-serving organizations more trauma-informed. APA’ s CEO, Arthur C. Evans, Jr., participated in a video promoting Awareness Day 2018 and encouraging members to watch the live event.

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In the area of major media outlet coverage, SAMHSA also earned a great deal of attention. For the third year in a row, NBC4 Washington served as the official Awareness Day Media Partner. They webcast the event live on their website and ran two articles about the event and mental health awareness month. In addition, major news outlet Politico included Awareness Day in its weekly newsletter Politico Pulse.

For the first time the Awareness Day media outreach strategy focused primarily on pitching the local angles of the event to state and regional outlets. Coverage featured profiles of the young adult leaders as well as state first spouses in their local newspapers. From Illinois to South Dakota, the work and the voices of the first spouses made an impact.

The Gray Washington News Bureau created a video featuring interviews of the honorary chairpersons and SAMHSA CMHS Branch Chief Dr. Gary Blau, which ran through ABC affiliates including Gray TV and KSFY-TV. The Chicago Tribune covered the findings of SAMHSA’ s data report, and the article ran in multiple publications around the country.