University of Louisville
Greater health by doing good.
Challenge
The messaging for a clinical trial recruitment campaign – whether it’s for diabetes or Crohn’s disease – is often centered around helping patients explore their treatment options. But what about the messaging for a study of healthy people?
Action
When the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute at the University of Louisville came to us with the HEAL Study – a community health study exploring how urban greening can positively impact the health of a neighborhood and the people who live there – we knew we were going to have to reevaluate our usual approach to recruitment.
The study involved potential long-term health benefits, neighborhood improvements, and customary incentives for clinical data collection. However, these weren’t going to provide enough immediate gratification to convince 700 healthy participants to enroll. Instead, our messaging relied on altruism to do the heavy lifting, and so the “Greater Health by Doing Good” campaign was born.
In addition to creating a logo, we executed a series of print materials, guerilla tactics, and digital efforts to remind our audience that participating in the HEAL Study could help their children, their neighbors, and even future generations.
Results
Within two weeks, campaign efforts drove 1,367 website visits (a traffic increase of 391%) and more than 80 survey completions. Now that enough time has passed, the effort is starting to see very positive results. People living in neighborhoods with more greenery were found to have lower levels of a blood marker associated with heart disease, diabetes, and some types of cancer compared with those who lived in more tree-bare neighborhoods. In fact, the decrease documented is similar to someone starting a regular exercise routine.
“This is the strongest evidence of any study that’s ever been done on trees and their relationship to health.” said Aruni Bhatnagar, a professor of medicine at the University of Louisville, who led the project.