By Dr. Yael Bar-Zeev, Coordinator of TIPH Campaign, Israel
"Making Public Health the Students’ Choice" is the focus of the Israeli "This Is Public Health" campaign. The campaign, led by Hebrew University’s Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, is a nation-wide collaboration between public health schools and programs at five universities and colleges - Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Tel-Aviv University, Haifa University, Ashkelon Academic College, and the Israeli Medical Association of Public Health Physicians.
The Israeli TIPH campaign aims to increase the numbers of students applying to study in a public health program - mainly BA and MPH, and to increase interest among medical doctors to undertake a residency in Public Health. The campaign also seeks to strengthen current collaborations between schools of public health (SPH) in Israel, and strengthen the public health workforce in the country and the region.
Our activities focused on creating a social media campaign, primarily through Facebook and Instagram, which are the leading social media platforms in Israel. To generate engagement and interest, we created a series of videos featuring students from different schools and professional backgrounds and public health practitioners, researchers and lecturers. Students shared their reasons for choosing to study public health, what attracted them to the field, and what they gained from their public health education and training. Public health professionals described what public health means for them, and highlighted successes and challenges over the years. Each video included subtitles in Hebrew, English and Arabic.
The social media TIPH campaign led people to a designated landing website that was created for this project: https://phi.org.il/. Those interested in receiving further information about studying public health, were invited to leave their details to be contacted by the relevant partner institution.
In total, 16 different videos were created to date. Ten featured Arab and Jewish students of diverse socio-cultural and professional backgrounds (e.g., nursing, pharmacy, healthcare administration), studying in various degree programs, including BA in Public Health, MPH, and PhD. Two students were medical students who are also completing an MPH and considering a future Public Health residency. Six videos featured public health professionals from the governmental and NGO sectors, professional agencies and academia. All videos can be viewed (with English subtitles) at this link: https://phi.org.il/english/. The campaign included several promoted posts on our Facebook page, Instagram account and Twitter account.
To evaluate the ongoing TIPH campaign, we collected baseline data on the number of MPH applicants and successful applicants in the participating SPH over the previous 3 years; number of BA applicants to the Ashkelon Academic College; and number of applicants for a residency in public health.
Due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, registration for the 2020-2021 academic year has been extended until the end of August 2020. In addition, the campaign’s launch, originally scheduled for early March, was postponed to mid-June, due to the ongoing pandemic. We will be tracking overall engagement with the content of the campaign, including number of followers for the social media accounts, number of link clicks, likes, shares and comments, overall and for each post individually, as well as the number of people requesting further information from each School.
One immediate positive outcome of the strengthened collaborations between the TIPH partners was an initiative that produced a series of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic webinars.
Topics included:
- The scientific basis for coping with the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic and other outbreaks: the contribution of Schools of Public Health, and academia [5th March, 2020]
- Health Promotion during the pandemic: challenges and opportunities [3rd May, 2020]
- Promoting physical activity during the pandemic, [10th May, 2020]
- Special populations coping with the pandemic [14th May, 2020]
- SARS-CoV-2 testing, surveillance and policy [22nd June, 2020]
In addition, the campaign will be highlighted at the Public Health Annual Conference, a collaboration between all of the Schools of Public Health and the Israeli Medical Association of Public Health Physicians, scheduled for the 20th of July, 2020.
Through the Israeli TIPH Campaign, we hope to inspire many future students to make Public Health their professional career choice, and join us in improving health for all!
#ThisIsPublicHealth, #TIPHEurope, #ASPHERcampaign, #ASPPHgoesglobal