R.E.A.C.H.

The Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) award is part of a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) initiative to support public health efforts to reduce chronic  diseases, promote healthier lifestyles, reduce health disparities, and control healthcare spending.

Campaign Goals

Year One

To accomplish the first year's objectives, BPSOS worked in tandem with ArrowGTP to create a mass media campaign to promote two key messages: promote a smoke-free environment through voluntary policy adoption and reduce chronic illnesses through clinical-community linkage referral system. The mass media campaign was culturally and linguistically adapted to target the Vietnamese Americans community in five targeted cities: Anaheim, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, and Westminster.

The initial phase of REACH was comprised of content and brand development. Everything from logo design to website development was critical to the REACH brand that is culturally and linguistically appropriate and appealing. Presentation materials included a website, Facebook profile, flyers, brochures, signage, and videos. The campaign commenced with a highly successful press conference where multiple influential media partners attended. These partners subsequently provided various media opportunities for REACH representatives and its partners to continue increasing the public and partner messages to recruit and request support of plaza and property owners, clinical partners, and community based organizations

Year Two

In the second year of the program, the main focus was to identify, collect, develop and translate health promotion information on smoke-free environments, tobacco cessation, and chronic illness prevention and management into linguistically and culturally appropriate language. The Smoke-Free Outdoor (SFO) program was heavily promoted to the businesses and commercial plaza owners in these cities in order to get the Lease Addendums signed, and, as a final result, post ‘Live Well’ signage throughout these participating plazas. The chronic illness topic was also emphasized to assist increasing the referrals in the Community Clinical Referral System (CCLRS). To accomplish these messages, over the course of the second year, ArrowGTP has worked closely with BPSOS-CA and REACH partners to conduct mass media communication services to promote the aforementioned messages. The integrated media strategy was employed with multiple traditional and new media outlets. The media campaign continued its momentum from year one with appearances on multiple influential media outlets. Along with a REACH representative, all the coalition partners rotated their turns in media segments and were promptly highlighted for their services, participation in REACH and services to the general public. 45 individual media appearances occurred with each segment being aired/published multiple times.

Year Three

Currently in our third year, ArrowGTP is continuing to disseminate public messages via print, TV, radio, Facebook, and Twitter. 68 plazas have been recruited in all three years, which has at least 1,400 businesses. Based on those plazas, a conservative estimate of 140,000 people have been reached regarding REACH, including business tenants, employees, and patrons.  For meaningful content and continuous public engagement, REACH has been tracking plazas and taking photos of them with installed signages. We increase public’s positive reception by promoting the plazas, featuring plaza owners’ testimonials. Website, Facebook, and Twitter are updated on a regular basis with bilingual content.