Health Communications and Marketing

IWA understands what is needed to successfully meet the challenges of creating standardized health consumer messaging for diverse multi-cultural communities. At times, various community leaders and stakeholder groups may have conflicting agendas.  We know how to work with these groups to reach consensus-driven decisions. IWA accomplishes these objectives by employing a health and wellness marketing methodology that builds on the Bronx Health REACH Changing Systems and Changing Communities Model .  It is an approach that recognizes that it takes a community working together to address health disparities and effect lasting change.

Leveraging certain underlying principles of the Model, IWA is currently working with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities (MHHD) and the Office of Communications to develop culturally sensitive H1N1 (Swine Flu) health communications and outreach training materials.  Among our responsibilities, we are collaborating with agency leadership to ensure that media content is socially significant and relevant as well as to deliver competency-based Outreach Skills Training to Community Health Workers and local health department representatives tasked with the grassroots dissemination of public health information. 

IWA has designed and implemented a public information campaign, targeting the vulnerable and “hard to reach” populations of young African American and Hispanic American girls and women, to raise their awareness of the threat of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, its connection to cervical cancer, and the potential risks and benefits of HPV vaccine administration. 

Under a previous engagement, IWA has also supported the State of Maryland’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) Pandemic Influenza (PanFlu) Preparedness Program.  We were responsible for consultative advice on conformance to the then-prevailing Federal PanFlu preparedness guidance, as well as the event planning and logistics for the State’s 2005 PanFlu Summit.  That Summit brought together representatives from Federal emergency response organizations, Maryland State government, business, and the public in a town hall setting to raise awareness of the threat of PanFlu and disseminate information on the overall Maryland PanFlu Preparedness Plan.