The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with BPSOS-CCA to facilitate a four-year project to encourage a  smoke-free environment and decrease chronic illnesses within the Vietnamese American community in Orange County, CA via the REACH (Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health) grant. Targeted cities with the highest concentration of Vietnamese populations were Garden Grove, Westminster, Santa Ana, Fountain Valley, and Anaheim. ArrowGTP was contracted to conduct a mass health communication campaign

Goals

• To empower the Vietnamese American community to achieve a healthy and happy lifestyle
• To provide access to reduced-cost or free cessation treatments
• To deter and protect people from secondhand smoke exposure
• To increase awareness and practice of healthy behaviors to decrease preventable chronic illnesses
• To increase and implement known solutions to meet REACH’s commitments

Approach

• Provided mass media communications in the targeted cities such as press conferences, and media campaigns on local TV, radios
• Organized dozens of public awareness events and participated in community events 
• Arranged speaking engagements at various businesses and media outlets 
• Assisted with pre-surveys and post-surveys
• Spread social media campaigns 
• Recruited commercial plazas to adopt a smoke-free policy on-premise
• Published quarterly newsletters and success stories, two of which were highlighted nationally by the CDC

Results

• Almost 70 plazas recruited and adopted a smoke-free policy
• 230+ “Live Well” signs posted
• 787 pre-surveys and 1,500 post-surveys conducted
• 1,500+ businesses reached and positively impacted 
• 150,000+ people reached, including business tenants, employees, and patrons
• 90% people surveyed indicated they support a smoke-free environment

Year One

To accomplish the first year’s objectives, BPSOS worked in tandem with ArrowGTP to create a mass media campaign to promote two key messages: promote a smoke-free environment through voluntary policy adoption and reduce chronic illnesses through clinical-community linkage referral system. The mass media campaign was culturally and linguistically adapted to target the Vietnamese Americans community in five targeted cities: Anaheim, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, and Westminster.

The initial phase of REACH was comprised of content and brand development. Everything from logo design to website development was critical to the REACH brand that is culturally and linguistically appropriate and appealing. Presentation materials included a website, Facebook profile, flyers, brochures, signage, and videos. The campaign commenced with a highly successful press conference where multiple influential media partners attended. These partners subsequently provided various media opportunities for REACH representatives and its partners to continue increasing the public and partner messages to recruit and request support of plaza and property owners, clinical partners, and community-based organizations

Year Two

In the second year of the program, the main focus was to identify, collect, develop and translate health promotion information on smoke-free environments, tobacco cessation, and chronic illness prevention and management into linguistically and culturally appropriate language. The Smoke-Free Outdoor (SFO) program was heavily promoted to the businesses and commercial plaza owners in these cities in order to get the Lease Addendums signed, and, as a final result, post ‘Live Well’ signage throughout these participating plazas. The chronic illness topic was also emphasized to assist in increasing the referrals in the Community Clinical Referral System (CCLRS). To accomplish these messages, over the course of the second year, ArrowGTP has worked closely with BPSOS-CA and REACH partners to conduct mass media communication services to promote the aforementioned messages. The integrated media strategy was employed with multiple traditional and new media outlets. The media campaign continued its momentum from year one with appearances on multiple influential media outlets. Along with a REACH representative, all the coalition partners rotated their turns in media segments and were promptly highlighted for their services, participation in REACH and services to the general public. 45 individual media appearances occurred with each segment being aired/published multiple times.

…to be continued