- Email: [email protected]
From the Epilepsy Foundation
Epilepsy & Behavior Epilepsy & Behavior 5 (2004) 275–276 www.elsevier.com/locate/yebeh
Editorial
From the Epilepsy Foundation We know all too well that for many people, the stigma of epilepsy can be worse than the seizures themselves. At the same time, research, specifically a survey of some 20,000 high school students conducted by the Epilepsy Foundation in the summer of 2001, showed that even a small increase in awareness resulted in greater acceptance. For the past 3 years, therefore, the Foundation has based its public education strategy on those results and plans to continue to do so this year. Public awareness, public understanding, public acceptance: they are the three cardinal virtues on which all the Epilepsy Foundation’s public education programs are based. Within that construct, however, there’s a lot of variety—and perhaps never more so than during the past few years, when support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has made it possible for the Foundation to target its educational messages more tightly than ever before. Recent educational campaigns illustrate the point. Designed to improve quality of life for adolescents with epilepsy, the 2001 and 2002 campaigns promoted knowledge about epilepsy as a method of achieving improved social acceptance and understanding in schools and neighborhoods. Our message: that young people with epilepsy, like everyone else, are entitled to respect. Our primary medium was radio. Our messengers were celebrities popular with our target group, namely, ‘NSYNC’ and Ashton Kutcher, and we were able to extend our media reach through a partnership with Clear Channel, giving us access to its huge stable of radio outlets. Last year, we narrowed our focus even further, and ran an Entitled to Respect campaign directed to African-American youth and the African-American community. By all measures, it was the most successful yet. The highly popular Grammy Award-winning singer Monica (Arnold) was recruited as the campaign’s spokesperson and delivered its messages on radio. The Foundation also established a successful partnership with Radio One Inc., to ensure that those radio messages were carried on stations popular with young African-American audiences during November. Radio One is the largest national network in the United States serving the African-American community, with an average of three radio stations in each of the 22 largest urban markets in the nation. The agreement guaranteed that the Epilepsy 1525-5050/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.yebeh.2004.02.010
Foundation’s public service announcements about epilepsy and the importance of respect for the adolescent living with epilepsy were aired on each of the network’s 66 radio stations during the 4 weeks of the campaign, for a total of 9900 plays. The result was more than 120 million ‘‘media impressions,’’ of which 88.5 million (about 80%) were among African-American listeners. Media impressions, the gold standard for measuring media success, refer to the potential audience that a specific piece of information may reach via a specific communication medium. Other tie-ins added to the campaign’s reach. Radio One stations distributed 12,000 Entitled to Respect educational brochures in their communities. Thirty-three stations helped drive traffic to the Foundation’s Entitled to Respect youth web site (shortened to E2R in deference to teenspeak) by linking their stations’ web sites to the Foundation site. The Foundation also distributed Monica’s public service announcement to 1800 other youth-oriented radio stations throughout the nation, and it continues to be played. Early results, reported at the end of January, included 5800 broadcasts, which translated into another 36.8 million media impressions, for a total of more than 157 million impressions from radio alone. In addition, the American Urban Radio Network and BET radio taped segments with Monica and with the Foundation’s president and CEO, Eric Hargis, and board member Denise Pease, who also took part in call-in shows and drive time interviews on Radio One and in interviews conducted by the Associated Press. A third element in last year’s campaign was a Get the Word Out! Contest sponsored in local communities by the Foundation’s affiliate network. The contest invited young people to create an essay, song, rap, poster, or other creative form of communication focusing on the nature of respect and its role in the community, and brought in more than 400 entries from young people with and without epilepsy. So what lies ahead for the Epilepsy Foundation as it shapes this year’s campaign? The 2004 Epilepsy Month campaign will continue to build on the Entitled to Respect theme with a primary focus on the broader African-American community. At the same time, we will be testing messages and campaign design with an eye on the 2005 campaign, which will be targeted to the
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Editorial / Epilepsy & Behavior 5 (2004) 275–276
Spanish-speaking community in the United States. Affiliates in selected pilot sites with substantial Spanishspeaking populations will be working closely with campaign staff on materials, media strategies, and community partnerships. It was the partnerships that produced the largest number of media impressions last year, and they are key to the continuation of a higher profile for epilepsy and the Epilepsy Foundation as we
seek to improve our educational outreach to an increasingly diverse America. Ann Scherer Epilepsy Foundation E-mail address: [email protected] Available online 1 April 2004
Editorial
From the Epilepsy Foundation We know all too well that for many people, the stigma of epilepsy can be worse than the seizures themselves. At the same time, research, specifically a survey of some 20,000 high school students conducted by the Epilepsy Foundation in the summer of 2001, showed that even a small increase in awareness resulted in greater acceptance. For the past 3 years, therefore, the Foundation has based its public education strategy on those results and plans to continue to do so this year. Public awareness, public understanding, public acceptance: they are the three cardinal virtues on which all the Epilepsy Foundation’s public education programs are based. Within that construct, however, there’s a lot of variety—and perhaps never more so than during the past few years, when support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has made it possible for the Foundation to target its educational messages more tightly than ever before. Recent educational campaigns illustrate the point. Designed to improve quality of life for adolescents with epilepsy, the 2001 and 2002 campaigns promoted knowledge about epilepsy as a method of achieving improved social acceptance and understanding in schools and neighborhoods. Our message: that young people with epilepsy, like everyone else, are entitled to respect. Our primary medium was radio. Our messengers were celebrities popular with our target group, namely, ‘NSYNC’ and Ashton Kutcher, and we were able to extend our media reach through a partnership with Clear Channel, giving us access to its huge stable of radio outlets. Last year, we narrowed our focus even further, and ran an Entitled to Respect campaign directed to African-American youth and the African-American community. By all measures, it was the most successful yet. The highly popular Grammy Award-winning singer Monica (Arnold) was recruited as the campaign’s spokesperson and delivered its messages on radio. The Foundation also established a successful partnership with Radio One Inc., to ensure that those radio messages were carried on stations popular with young African-American audiences during November. Radio One is the largest national network in the United States serving the African-American community, with an average of three radio stations in each of the 22 largest urban markets in the nation. The agreement guaranteed that the Epilepsy 1525-5050/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.yebeh.2004.02.010
Foundation’s public service announcements about epilepsy and the importance of respect for the adolescent living with epilepsy were aired on each of the network’s 66 radio stations during the 4 weeks of the campaign, for a total of 9900 plays. The result was more than 120 million ‘‘media impressions,’’ of which 88.5 million (about 80%) were among African-American listeners. Media impressions, the gold standard for measuring media success, refer to the potential audience that a specific piece of information may reach via a specific communication medium. Other tie-ins added to the campaign’s reach. Radio One stations distributed 12,000 Entitled to Respect educational brochures in their communities. Thirty-three stations helped drive traffic to the Foundation’s Entitled to Respect youth web site (shortened to E2R in deference to teenspeak) by linking their stations’ web sites to the Foundation site. The Foundation also distributed Monica’s public service announcement to 1800 other youth-oriented radio stations throughout the nation, and it continues to be played. Early results, reported at the end of January, included 5800 broadcasts, which translated into another 36.8 million media impressions, for a total of more than 157 million impressions from radio alone. In addition, the American Urban Radio Network and BET radio taped segments with Monica and with the Foundation’s president and CEO, Eric Hargis, and board member Denise Pease, who also took part in call-in shows and drive time interviews on Radio One and in interviews conducted by the Associated Press. A third element in last year’s campaign was a Get the Word Out! Contest sponsored in local communities by the Foundation’s affiliate network. The contest invited young people to create an essay, song, rap, poster, or other creative form of communication focusing on the nature of respect and its role in the community, and brought in more than 400 entries from young people with and without epilepsy. So what lies ahead for the Epilepsy Foundation as it shapes this year’s campaign? The 2004 Epilepsy Month campaign will continue to build on the Entitled to Respect theme with a primary focus on the broader African-American community. At the same time, we will be testing messages and campaign design with an eye on the 2005 campaign, which will be targeted to the
276
Editorial / Epilepsy & Behavior 5 (2004) 275–276
Spanish-speaking community in the United States. Affiliates in selected pilot sites with substantial Spanishspeaking populations will be working closely with campaign staff on materials, media strategies, and community partnerships. It was the partnerships that produced the largest number of media impressions last year, and they are key to the continuation of a higher profile for epilepsy and the Epilepsy Foundation as we
seek to improve our educational outreach to an increasingly diverse America. Ann Scherer Epilepsy Foundation E-mail address: [email protected] Available online 1 April 2004