HealthCommunicationCampaigns-FinalReport

Meghan Mitchell4/10/15

COM 4550Dr. Neuberger

Final Report

Situational Background

According to the American Dental Association, everyone, no matter the age, should visit the

dentist at least once a year, if not twice or more depending on the individual needs of the person.

There seems to be a disconnect between what people are supposed to do and what people actually

do because “100 million Americans” don’t even go once a year to see the dentist for an examination

(American Dental Association 2014). With the United States Census Bureau reporting the U.S.

population as an estimated 320 million, 100 million means about a third of the American population

doesn’t go to the dentist (United States Census Bureau 2015). This correlates directly with the

statistic provided by the American College Health Association National College Health Assessment

II (ACHA-NCHA II) stating that 64.9% of students have gone to the dentist in the past year which

leaves about a third of students who have not (National College Health Association 2014).

With a third of the population lacking routine dental examinations, it was apparent that

dental hygiene needed to be addressed. Also our group thought it would be a great departure from

the monotony of the campaigns surrounding the topics of STDs, sleep, and fitness and thus

#SaveYourSmile was born. #SaveYourSmile has the objective of spreading awareness of UCF

Dental Services as well as increasing knowledge of proper dental hygiene practices, primarily for

underclassmen students at UCF.

Situation Analysis

Every campaign should help facilitate behavior changes or have a recommended response

for the target audience to enact. In our campaign we want students to go to the dentist and start

flossing daily. In the Dental Hygiene survey created by Colgan et al., it was found that a quarter of

the students surveyed either never go to the dentist or only go when there is a problem (Colgan et.

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al, 2015). For those students, we want to promote that they should be going to the dentist on a

routine basis, once every six months, or at least once a year. For the 64.9% of students who go to

the dentist once a year, according to the ACHA-NCHA II, we would like to increase the frequency

they are visiting the dentist to once every 6 months (American College Health Association, 2014).

The second component of our target response is to get people to floss at least once a day. Our

statistics show that 62% of students do not floss at all. This is alarming because the American

Dental Association says flossing is a pivotal part of dental hygiene and should be done once a day at

the very least (American Dental Association, 2014). With most of our target audience not flossing at

all, it was apparent that getting them to floss at least once a day is the target behavior we needed to

focus on.

Our recommended responses are very feasible for our target audience. Most of the students

we surveyed, 74% to be exact, have dental insurance (Colgan et. al, 2015). This means they’re

already paying for a service they rarely ever use. In our static message, which I will talk about more

in-depth in a later section, we show how quick and easy it is to schedule a dentist appointment on

campus and at a time that works for the student. This eliminates or lessens the impact of time as a

barrier. As for flossing, we wanted to remind people just how short of a time it takes to floss. In the

amount of time it takes to edit a photo or watch a PSA, you could have flossed your teeth. We

emphasized that it takes mere seconds to do it, so it won’t be hard to add into students’ daily

routines. This makes it extremely feasible for students and also eliminates the perceived barrier of

time. Students can improve their dental hygiene dramatically just by flossing daily and visiting the

dentist even once a year. That’s a small price for a huge benefit.

Both our static and dynamic messages were targeting underclassmen, freshmen and

sophomore students. We targeted them because they are forming the habits they will carry with

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them throughout their college experience, so what better habits to form than routinely going to get a

dental cleaning at UCF Dental Services and flossing once a day. Also this demographic of students

primarily lives on campus, so they are always in close proximity to UCF Dental Services and they

are more than likely covered under their parent’s dental insurance which alleviates any out of

pocket cost for a routine dental cleaning. Supplemental influences that could help our campaign

would be the Orientation Team emphasizing that students can get dental cleanings on campus. As a

member of the 2013-2014 Orientation Team, we only mentioned the health services you can get on

campus and never the dental services. Adding that small tidbit of information during orientation

could help freshman students become more aware of UCF Dental Services. Also to my knowledge I

have never seen UCF Dental Services run any type of campaign. If they were to promote

themselves in any capacity it could also help our campaign. In addition to those influences, anyone

who uses #SaveYourSmile on social media would also draw attention to our campaign.

Formative Research

After realizing that freshmen and sophomore students would be the most receptive to our

campaign, we decided to disseminate our survey to Steve Neel’s COM 1000 class. This class was

perfect for the demographic we were targeting because it is primarily made up of underclassmen

students. We received 159 responses to our survey and the mean age for participants was 20 years

old (Colgan et. al, 2015).

First we wanted to find out if people even cared about dental hygiene and while question

eight showed 23% of people were neutral, the bulk of people were either moderately or extremely

concerned with a combined percentage of 68%. It was evident that people cared, but when asked if

they were actually taking the proper steps to maintain their dental hygiene, we found out their

concern did not translate into action. According to question nine, only 31% of the students we

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surveyed are flossing once a day and as I stated earlier 63% aren’t flossing at all (Colgan et. al

2015).

If student’s care about their dental hygiene and still weren’t flossing, what was stopping

them? Thankfully we included a question about barriers, so we were able to decipher where exactly

the problem of enacting the recommended the response lied. Question 16 revealed to us that time

and money were the biggest barriers for our target audience, so in order to get them to enact our

recommended response, we needed to knock those barriers down in our messages (Colgan et. al

2015).

Maintaining your dental hygiene isn’t limited to what goes on at home, but for a quarter of

the students we surveyed, their dental hygiene practices don’t seem to make it out of their

bathrooms and into the dentist chair. 25% of students either never go to the dentist or only go when

there is a problem, which in itself is a problem. Routine dentist visits are a preventative measure, so

dentists can help curb dental issues that could potentially lead to costly dental procedures. Again

with time and money as barriers, we knew that we needed to address those issues when creating our

messages. A response that could easily alleviate time as a barrier is telling students to schedule

dentist appointments for a time when they’re already on campus for class, but in question three we

found out that 62% of students were either unsure or didn’t even know that UCF provided dental

services (Colgan et. al 2015). That statistic was the basis for our awareness message that I will

discuss in the following section.

Messages

As stated earlier, 62% of students don’t know that UCF provides dental services. From that

statistic, we knew we had to craft a message to make students aware that there is a dentist for their

convenience right on campus. The static awareness message is modeled after the social media

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platform Instagram. According to Maeve Duggan et al. 53% of Instagram users are ages 18-29 years

old and of that 53%, 31% have received some college education (Duggan et. al 2015). From that we

can posit that our target audience of underclassmen UCF students are heavy users of Instagram.

Thus the message should resonate very well with our target audience.

As for the content of the message, each comment left on the “InstaSmile” post provides

more information about UCF Dental Services. Because our target demographic is so keen on

reading through Instagram comments very quickly, they can get a snapshot of all the information

they need to know about UCF Dental Services in the context of something that will heavily engage

them. Our message is pro-product with the product being UCF Dental Services. With our static

message we want to create recognition of the service in hopes that they will actually use it. We

show them the ease of making an appointment for a time that fits around their class schedule and

because money was also a barrier we included that they take dental insurance which 74% of the

students we surveyed already have (Colgan et. al 2015).

There are several message components featured in our static awareness message.

Identification of topic area is clearly seen on the “InstaSmile” post by location tag of “UCF Dental

Services”. The student saying she just got cleaning is a representation of the target response to be

performed. She also states it was her 6 month cleaning which is a portrayal of when it should be

done and she also notes her cleaning was at UCF Dental Services which is a specification of

circumstances where it should be done.

In our static message we used a girl who appeared to be between the ages of 18-21. In the

survey we conducted, the responses indicated that students highly favored seeing their peers in

messages, so we wanted to include someone who could pass for a traditional undergraduate student.

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Our dynamic message is instructional and also depicts “InstaSmile”, but instead of

showcasing someone who got their teeth cleaned at UCF Dental Services, it showcases someone

who edits their teeth to look good. There have been several viral videos showcasing models being

photoshopped and our video has the same premise which makes it engaging for the viewer to watch.

People spend so much time online editing themselves, including their teeth, but if they just brushed

twice a day and remembered to floss, they would have to do a lot less editing. The instructional

dynamic message serves as a reminder to floss your teeth and also emphasizes the fact that flossing

takes a very short amount of time to do, so time should not be a barrier.

Dissemination

When disseminating our static message we will use flyers. Health and Wellness Promotions

should table during every freshman and transfer orientation to hand out the flyers and on Market

Wednesdays. Also the flyers will be placed in bathrooms around campus and in every residence hall

to saturate our target demographic. Our dynamic message would be disseminated as a PSA on

television and online through social media. It could also play in monitors set up in the Health Center

and/or various buildings around campus.

Evaluation Plan

A pretty good indicator for the success of our static message is to see if there is an increase

in the number of dental appointments made at UCF Dental Services. For our dynamic message, we

would use the survey disseminated at graduation and ask “How often do you floss?” to see if there

is an increase in the percentage of people who floss their teeth once a day. Also we could track

#SaveYourSmile to see how many people are using, liking, and sharing our hashtag.

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References

American College Health Association (2014). National college health assessment II.

American Dental Association. (2014). Flossing.

American Dental Association. (2014). Questions about going to the dentist.

Colgan M., Denunzio J., Mitchell M., Sissons E., & Stargel C. (2015). Dental hygiene.

Duggan M., Ellison B. N., Lampe C., Lenhart A., & Madden M. (2015). Social media update

2014: Pew research center.

United States Census Bureau (2015). U.S. and World Population Clock.

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Formative Research Survey and Results

1. How old are you?● 18 (15%)● 19 (31%)● 20 (17%)● 21 (12%)● 22-32 (28%)

The Average age is 20.5

2. What is your academic standing?● Freshman (31%)● Sophomore (23%)● Junior (30%)● Senior (16%)

3. Do you know if UCF provides dental services to students?● Yes (39%)● No (22%)● Unsure (40%)

4. Do you have a personal dentist?● Yes (72%)● No (28%)

5. Do you have dental insurance?● Yes (74%)● No (16%)● Unsure (9%)

6. How often do you visit the dentist?● Once a year (30%)● Twice a year (45%)● Only when there is a problem (23%)● Never (2%)

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7. How often should you visit the dentist?● Once a year (20%)● Twice a year (78%)● Only when there is a problem (3%)● Never (0%)

8. How concerned are you with your dental hygiene?● Extremely concerned (19%)● Moderately concerned (49%)● Neutral (23%)● Slightly concerned (6%)● Not at all concerned (3%)

9. Please answer honestly.a. How often do you floss your teeth?

● “I don’t” (62%)● “Once a day” (33%)● “Twice a day” (3%)● ‘Three times a day” (0%)● “After every meal” (1%)

b. How often do you brush your teeth?● “I don’t” (.66%)● “Once a day” (18%)● “Twice a day” (65%)● ‘Three times a day” (9%)● “After every meal” (4%)

10. How easy do you feel it is to:a. Maintain your dental hygiene?

● Easy (67%)● Neutral (27%)● Difficult (4%)

b. Make a dentist appointment?● Easy (49%)● Neutral (36%)● Difficult (13%)

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11. Would you like to see a dental hygiene advertisement in or on any of these?a. Bathroom (43% say “Neutral”, 31% say “Somewhat favor”)b. Sidewalk stickers (16% say “Somewhat oppose”, 58% say “Neutral”)c. Flyers (47% say “Neutral”, 23% say “Somewhat favor”)d. Transportation (51% say “Neutral”, 17% say “Somewhat favor”)e. Social Media (42% say “Neutral”, 29% say “Somewhat favor”)f. Knights E-Mail (46% say “Strongly oppose”, 54% say “Neutral”)g. Market Wednesday tabling (70% say “Neutral”, 45% say “Somewhat favor”)

12. For the following three questions please indicate how much you like each advertisement.a. Gross/scare tactic (98% “Hate”)b. Emotional appeal (54% “Neutral”, 58% “Somewhat like”)c. Factual (73% “Somewhat like”, 52% “Love”)

13. Who would you like to see in dental hygiene advertisements?a. Peers (76% “Somewhat favor”)b. Dentists (66% “Somewhat favor”)c. University administration (83% “Neutral”)d. Cartoon characters (76% “Neutral”)

14. What types of advertising affects you the most?a. Visuals (55%)b. Factual information (36%)c. Vibrant colors (7%)d. Spokesperson (2%)

15. What barriers do you feel prevent you from going to the dentist?a. Time (67% “Somewhat of a barrier”)b. Money (46% “Big barrier”, 40% “Somewhat of a barrier”)c. Transportation (73% “Not a barrier”)d. Fear (87% “Not a barrier”)

16. What barriers do you feel prevent you from obtaining your dental hygiene goals?a. Money (61% “Not a barrier”)b. Time (60% “Somewhat of a barrier”)c. Discomfort (64% “Not a barrier”)d. I don’t care enough (71% “Not a barrier”)

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17. How much do you like the following slogans?a. “1 or 32 – Floss once a day or lose 32 teeth” (45% “Bad”)b. “Bright smile for a bright future” (83% “Good”)c. “Do you time or feel the grime” (48% “Good)d. “College is not the time for dentures” (53% “Good)e. “Breath check: Don’t be that guy” (50% “Very good”)f. “Don’t let this nightmare become a reality” (41% “Bad”)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3BtkLXhyVM&feature=youtu.be

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HealthCommunicationCampaigns-FinalReport

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