Summary

March Madness for Total Fitness

Health communication campaigns have shown that social norms can change … if it’s POPULAR, EASY, & FUN to do.  Drs. Gary Kreps and Kathy Rowan piloted ‘shared service-learning’ and mHealth technology that could be used to create a new campus norm – ‘to be Totally Fit’ (i.e., the DoD definition of Total Health).

We’re testing …

(1) Make it EASY by adding to any existing course, the option of a shared service-learning project that sets a goal to achieve a shared aim, an intercollegiate fitness challenge;
(2) Make it FUN by ‘gamifying’ it (i.e., Compete to have the course, department, or school with the most fitness points), and
(3) Make it POPULAR by associating it with March Madness, adding prizes that local retailers can contribute to, and assigning service-learners to use social media to promote the competition as well as to share what they learn in their courses about ‘what works’ for Total Fitness.

In the graduate Health Comm Campaign course, a student conducted a literature search of fitness competitions. Her report was given to students in an undergrad PR course, who were easy to recruit because they had struggled with their own Freshman weight gain. These PR students conducted a survey to assess what would make the challenge more fun and popular. Using survey data, students in another undergrad Health Comm course created the competition. Finally, the entire undergrad Intro to Comm course split in half and actually tried out the fitness challenge and mobile technology.

It was easy to integrate the projects into courses as well as coordinate among them. For more details, go to Pilot: March Madness.  These pilots were presented at 5 conferences.

Poster and Presentations

2010    NIH mHealth Summit
2010    American Psychological Association
2011    Association for Prevention Teaching & Research
2011    Council of University Directors of Clinical Psychology
2012    Living and Leading with Resilience (George Mason University)

Share CBT-I

In 2016, we began to pilot social media channels to promote CBT-I (i.e., ‘what works’ for insomnia).  We targeted 3 audiences:  Primary Care, healthcare consumers, and health professions students.  What we achieved:

1. Three faculty members, Gary Kreps & Serge Samoilenko in the Communication Department, and Jeffrey Herrick (who is now Associate Professor, Exercise Physiology, U of Lynchburg) participated.
2. A graduate Health Comm course included 2 service-learning projects: a formative research project addressing Primary Care use of the Insomnia Hub as a ‘digital bridge’ to CBT-I services and a Hub blog post about CBT-I translating science to the public.
3. An undergrad PR course project tested a few social platforms (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter) to promote CBT-I blog posts and CBT-I Live.
4. All faculty members indicated they wished to continue to build on current work in their future courses.
5. Gary Kreps and Jeff Herrick submitted 2 grant proposals specifically to test ‘Share CBT-I’ pilots.

CBT-I Live

Faculty members (Gary Kreps, Serge Samoilenko, and Jeffrey Herrick) began to pilot ideas for a live-streamed show to promote CBT-I as well as researchers, clinicians, and educators. For more, see Pilot: CBT-I Live.

(Hint:  To speed up the video, use the gear icon at the bottom of the video.)

A Conference Hub

Dr. Gary Kreps is a leader in the field of Health Communication and he co-hosts the DC Health Comm Conference every other year in Northern Virginia near George Mason University.

In 2017, he tested different ways to use the network of knowledge sharing Hubs to try to extend the life of the knowledge shared in conference posters, presentations, and panels. We also wanted to give participants the opportunity to promote their resources to the public, such as NCI funding opportunities.

For more, go to Pilot: A Conference Hub.

2019 Pilot