Prioritizing and Addressing Targeted Health Concerns

In addition to investing in local organizations and initiatives, we also create and deploy customized health campaigns that tackle some of the area’s most pressing needs.

How do you address a deeply entrenched and socially celebrated behavior among young adult males? You create an animated digital series that rivals the quality of animated shows on Netflix and the Adult Swim network.

Addressing a multi-faceted health epidemic requires a multi-faceted solution. It Impacts Us All educated people about the dangers of opioids while addressing the community-driven public stigma that creates an environment for addiction and substance use disorders to grow.

Across racial and ethnic groups, African Americans in west Orange have almost double the prevalence of low birthweight babies compared to White and Hispanic women, a trend that is mirrored in national, state and county-level statistics. Low birthweight babies are often the result of an unhealthy pregnancy, but the reasons for an unhealthy pregnancy are largely driven by systemic factors. Strong Beautiful Future created a community-driven campaign that leveraged trusted Black voices within the healthcare community to educate and empower young Black women to overcome some of the barriers they faced during pregnancy.

In May 2017, the District partnered with The Public Good Projects (PGP) to identify and prioritize specific behavioral health factors in the community. The District reviewed several county health prioritization methodologies and settled on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) County Health Ranking system. In order to employ RWJF County Health Rankings for Orange County, PGP researchers created a tool to disaggregate Orange County’s overall county rank score into individual measures.

Based on the 2017 data, this RWJF County Health Rankings prioritization tool indicated that the measures that should be focused on in West Orange County were adult smoking, low birthweight, and binge drinking. Additionally, The WOHD and PGP agreed that given the scale of the opioid epidemic it should be prioritized as well.

In 2018, PGP and the District launched four behavior change interventions addressing each of the public health issues above. After the first year, the adult smoking campaign was removed from the scope, and the three remaining campaigns ran through 2021 and were evaluated yearly.

To learn more about these campaigns, or how your organization can partner in this work, please email your inquiries to info@wohd1949.org or call 407-337-6933.