Evaluation of the public health social marketing campaign ‘Medway Can’: Using the RE-AIM framework to capture impact and implementation

Objectives:

Medway Can is a social marketing campaign aimed at encouraging residents to be more active and adopt healthier food choices. The campaign is part of a Medway whole system approach to address increased prevalence of obesity. Objectives of the evaluation are twofold, to understand the ‘active ingredients’ of the campaign- what works, for whom and under what circumstances and provide policy and practice recommendations to the public health team.

Design:

Objectives of the evaluation are aligned to the RE-AIM evaluation framework, capturing data across five domains (Reach, Efficacy, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance).

• Reach: Proportion of target audience engaging

• Effectiveness: Impact on antecedents to behaviour change and behaviours

• Adoption: Types of organisations engaging.

• Implementation: Barriers and facilitators to delivery of, and engagement with, campaign

• Maintenance: Recommendations for sustainability

Methods:

Mixed-methods evaluation. Three work packages:

1. Consensus workshop to co-develop logic model, evaluation framework and conduct an Evaluability Assessment.

2. Cross-sectional survey distributed to all Medway residents to assess awareness of campaign, impact on motivation and behaviour, use of resources

3. Semi-structured interviews with representatives from stakeholder groups- Medway residents, community organisations, schools, local businesses.

Results:

Data collection is ongoing until May 2023. Preliminary analysis of quantitative and demographic data (n=110) illustrates reach and effectiveness of the campaign. Interviews (n=12) conducted to-date highlight barriers and facilitators to implementation.

Conclusions:

Findings will be used by Medway Council to inform a healthy weight strategy and determine what elements of the campaign will be continued. Also how to adapt to successfully reach target populations.