Communicating the healthy choice to our communities : a communication toolkit

Abstract

Communicating the healthy choice to our communities: a communication toolkit is a graduate project in partnership with the La Crosse Medical Health Science Consortium's Healthiest County 2015: La Crosse project. Over 30 area organizations are partners in the project and are working together to help make the healthy choice the easy choice in La Crosse County. The goal is to positively influence health behaviors to increase La Crosse County's health ranking to number one (according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's County Health Rankings) in Wisconsin by 2015. The goal of the communication toolkit is to help the partners create strategic communications plans, align communication efforts across the partners with a tagline ('making the health choice together') and promote innovative thinking about communication and its influence on health behaviors. The communication toolkit was used during the 3rd annual Health Summit when the project partners came together to discuss the Healthiest County 2015 project. Facilitators guided the partners through a step-by-step process to create strategic communication plans for each focus area. By creating greater awareness in the general public with effective communication about healthy choices, we can increase the likelihood of becoming the healthiest county in Wisconsin by 2015.