Increasing patient engagement at an FQHC network: A social marketing campaign

The Institute for Family Health is a federally qualified health center network that provides primary care, behavioral health and dental care to 85,000 patients annually in New York State. In alignment with federal and state priorities, the Institute is making substantial efforts to transform our service delivery model to support the “Triple Aim” of improving health, improving patients’ health care experiences, and lowering costs. To optimize the impact of this effort, the Institute has identified a need to increase “patient engagement” in health center services.  Among other patient engagement activities, in 2014 the Institute will launch a research-informed social marketing campaign to promote health center services to patients at its 12 New York City sites. The campaign is designed to increase patients’ motivation to actively seek, use and value primary and preventive care services, with a particular emphasis on reducing avoidable ER use. The proposed presentation will describe 1) Qualitative and quantitative research studies to identify underlying emotional and other barriers to patients’ becoming more involved and engaged in their own health care; 2) The design process used to develop the final campaign; 3) Campaign dissemination activities, including: printed materials displayed in the health centers or given to patients, web collateral, videos shown in waiting rooms and available online, scripts/talking points used by health center staff, and printed messages delivered through normal business channels such as reminder letters; and  4) The evaluation design for the campaign, including preliminary findings on indicators such as proportion of primary care appointments kept.