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From:
Rachel Myr <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 3 Mar 2011 19:37:01 -0500
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Fresh from my final exam (today!) in a course on health behavior and public health science, I can't resist.  If you want a successful campaign you will need to identify your target group quite specifically.  Go to it and talk to key people/organizations in the group and find out what their concerns around breastfeeding are, find out how many people in the community are in a stage of change amenable to trying a new behavior, find out what things in the community mediate the decision to breastfeed or to stop, figure out what you can do about them, and focus the campaign on that.  It's not a bad idea to have an outcome goal as well, in case anyone later wants to know whether the campaign funding was money well spent.  
In the field of public health/health promotion there are a number of evidence-based models for how to implement a health program.  One of the most comprehensive is called Precede-Proceed and it's well suited to this kind of campaign.  
What you definitely DON'T want to do is use the resources telling people something they are not ready to hear (preaching the breastfeeding gospel to the spectators trying to watch a ball game), or telling the wrong people something they already know and are acting on (patting the choir on the back).  Trust me, it is worth it to do the groundwork in advance.  Rarely does a campaign designed for a particular setting at a certain time, lend itself to being copied word for word and used in a different setting.   
It may be you can still kick it off by June 30 but if you can argue with your funding agency to postpone it until you have a campaign worth carrying out you will probably get more joy from it all.  There is a whole body of knowledge out there about health promotion, it's a developing science with expert practitioners who can help you along.
Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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