142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

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Local Stories, National Concerns and Global Reach: East Los High for Safe Sex Promotion and Teen Pregnancy Prevention

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Tuesday, November 18, 2014 : 11:30 AM - 11:45 AM

Hua Wang, PhD , Department of Communication, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY
Michael Rienti Jr., MA , Department of Geography, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY
Susan Kum, MPH , Department of Geography, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY
Audio (mp3) recording Recorded Presentation (mp4)
Background: East Los High is an entertainment-education health program designed to promote safe sex and teen pregnancy prevention, especially among Latino youth in the United States. It was released in June 2013 as an online teen drama at a fictional high school in East Los Angeles, where residents are predominantly Latinos facing economic, social, and health challenges. Additional transmedia contents and resources were provided to help achieve social objectives. It has innovative features in intervention design, dissemination, and assessment.

Objectives: To evaluate the scale of audience reach through digital technologies and to demonstrate the geographic distribution of the visitors to the program’s website.   

Methods: Google Analytics was used to track the number of visitors to the program’s website, pageviews, duration, device, and location. SpaceStat was used to create dynamic spatial-temporal visualizations of the number of website visitors and their geographic locations.

Results: In 9 months, the program’s website attracted 211,502 visits from 120,562 unique visitors, with 850,045 pageviews and an average duration of 9:21. People from all 50 US states and the District of Columbia visited the program’s website.  High proportions of visitors are located in the states with the highest Hispanic/Latino population and/or the highest teen pregnancy/birth/abortion rate. The audience also diffused to another 163 countries.

Conclusions: Entertainment media coupled with digital technologies can effectively deliver social and health messages and engage large scales of audience over time. Entertainment-education health programs like East Los High hold great potential to address sexual and reproductive health issues among youth and minority groups.

Learning Areas:

Advocacy for health and health education
Communication and informatics
Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice
Diversity and culture
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs

Learning Objectives:
Evaluate the scale of organic audience reach through digital technologies for an online intervention to promote safe sex and teen pregnancy prevention. Demonstrate the geographic distribution of the visitors to the program’s website over 9 months.

Keyword(s): Sexuality, Prevention

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been the PI and co-I of multiple funded grants by federal agencies and private institutions in the area of health communication, promotion, intervention, and evaluation.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 4159.0: Innovative programs in sexual and reproductive health