The National Hispanic Medical Association (NHMA) is a non-profit association representing the interests of 50,000 licensed Hispanic physicians in the United States. NHMA is dedicated to empowering Hispanic physicians to be leaders who will help eliminate health disparities and improve the health of Hispanics.
During the pandemic, NHMA received a grant from the CDC to increase vaccination rates in Hispanic populations and reached out to Media Cause to develop a mobilization campaign to support vaccine-hesitant individuals in making the best choices for themselves and their families.
As a membership organization, NHMA had little experience in community organizing within the wider public community. The Hispanic communities they wanted to ultimately serve had vastly different profiles and needs than their membership, who are healthcare professionals. For their campaign to be successful, they needed a new mobilization strategy to activate their existing base and community leaders and equip them, in turn, to share the resources with their own networks.
We began by conducting preliminary research into NHMA and its goals, the project goals specifically, and the audiences—both existing and new. We dug deep into the issue landscape in order to gather insights needed to understand what unique hurdles the target audiences faced and how we might overcome them (see more on our key findings below).
We developed a campaign strategy that would allow NHMA to mobilize its members and serve Hispanic communities across the U.S. through bilingual resources and that addresses the needs of the two distinct audiences.
Based on our research, we knew one of the most important factors in helping a member of the Hispanic community get vaccinated was hearing from a trusted voice, either a medical professional or a community leader. One of our strategic goals was to make it possible for more of these critical voices to be heard by our target audiences.
We found that there weren’t a lot of Spanish-language materials that were approachable and available for our target audiences and that health care providers and community leaders didn’t have the resources they needed to enter into conversations about considering vaccination. Equipping health care providers and community leaders with the resources they needed to begin those discussions and providing access to resources made specifically for Hispanic community members was a key component of our strategy.
Our mobilization campaign strategy laid the foundation for our content development, allowing NHMA to resource their medical professional membership and equip them to better serve their patients in making the best decisions for themselves and their families.
We worked with NHMA to identify target audiences, then conducted market research to gain a better understanding of NHMA members and vaccine-hesitant Hispanic communities. One finding from this research that was essential to forming a successful campaign strategy was that Hispanic community members face different barriers than other populations.
For example, where some vaccine-hesitant groups had political motivations, many LatinX community members in the U.S. actually wanted to get vaccinated but lacked accessible information concerning vaccination options, were concerned about documentation requirements, and were tentative about approaching mass injection sites because of police and military presence.
A key motivating factor for Hispanic/Latino community members for receiving the vaccine was hearing from a trusted authority, whether that be a high-level voice (e.g. Dr. Anthony Fauci) or a community leader (e.g. a pastor).
Based on NHMA’s deep knowledge of its members and our research, we developed a mobilization strategy and redeveloped the initiative’s visual identity, to activate and equip NHMA healthcare professionals and community leaders to better reach and serve their Hispanic patients in making the best decisions in terms of vaccination.
In order to bring our strategy to life, we began by developing a campaign aesthetic that presented the initiative in a less clinical, more approachable way. The final direction was Vaccinate For All/Vacunas Para Todos—a concept equally effective in both Spanish and English—then developed a campaign identity to bring it to life.
Next, we designed and developed a bilingual campaign microsite, with distinct user journeys and resources for our two target audiences.
One of the largest resources we developed was a complete campaign toolkit, introducing NHMA members and healthcare professionals to the campaign, providing key insights, and equipping them with campaign assets (bilingual) for use in their local communities and contexts.
Following campaign concepting, identity design, and asset development, we ran a paid media campaign to reach healthcare professionals and community leaders serving in the largest Hispanic communities in the U.S.
Throughout the campaign, we tested several variations, allowing us to drive target audiences to the microsite and make recommendations and optimizations based on English or Spanish-speaking communities.
NHMA rolled out this campaign to their members and national chapters through events, earned media, social media, and email marketing, and continues to support them in this long-term vaccination campaign.
