Encouraging vaccinations with videos and relational organizing

Incentives help nudge people to get vaccinated. How can nonprofits with limited resources quickly get the word out about vaccination incentive programs before they expire?

9Health365 is Colorado’s largest volunteer-driven, non-profit health fair and education program. It provides affordable biometric screenings at below market prices and has served more than 2 million individuals since 1980. In its mission to provide access for all to preventive health, the organization his saved millions of community dollars, by empowering healthy habits and getting treatment before conditions get worse.

During the Pandemic, 9Health:365 has been working to get vaccinations available especially for traditionally underserved groups. When the organization heard that  “the State of Colorado is offering $100 Walmart gift cards while supplies last to anyone who receives a first or second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at a participating state-operated vaccine site” 9Health:365 wanted to share details with the communities it serves.

This blog explains how 9Health365 created its own video and shared it with community organizers using the free Lumen5 video creation and VoteForce relational organizing app. The video and relational outreach campaign were completed and launched in a day.

Create your own advocacy video

Witness explains that good advocacy video have five components:
- Beginning (exposition) = Introduce the issue
- Transition point 1 = moves story to next section
- Middle (rising action) = Building blocks of story are added about core problem of issue
- Transition point 2 (climax) = moves story towards ending
- End (falling action) = Propose a possible solution/action

The 9Health365 followed this guideline in their 25 second video. They use two royalty free video clips and a soundtrack from the Lumen5 catalog along with some of their own graphics and captions. Grassroots groups with no budget and few technical skills prefer Lumen5 as it is easy to use and includes hundreds of free, professionally made video clips.

Outreach with relational organizing

9Health365 and 9NEWS have maintained a partnership focused on keeping Colorado healthy through preventive care and health awareness. 9Health advances health awareness effort across Colorado and provides people with the tools they need to take responsibility for their own health. It is using its deep community roots to encouraging people to get vaccinated.

It uses VoteForce to have supporters share messages it sends them with their contacts via text, WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. They also post the 9Health365 messages to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 9Health365 partners download the free VoteForce app from either the Apple or Google Store and subscribe to the 9Health365 channel to get alerts. Messages are targeted to specific groups so they only get alerts relevant to them.

9Health365

9Health:365 has been asked by the State to help distribute the COVID-19 vaccine in select communities. The State provides a list of vaccine locations and how to contact each here. 9Health365 partners with COVIDCheck Colorado for COVID-19 testing, and offers an antibody test through Quest Diagnostics.

Connecting with hard to reach groups

Relational organizing spreads messages through people that recipients already know. This increases the chances of a message being read and shared with their friends. 9Health365 partners use VoteForce to share the messages they get with their contacts through their preferred social media channel - text, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram. This is important as social media adoption varies by age and ethnicity.

TakeAway: Use relational organizing and advocacy videos to nudge people to do the right thing.

Deepak
DemLabs