Osteoporosis, a disease that results in low bone mass and deterioration of bone tissue, is a prevalent issue among the aged. The disease increases the likelihood of fractures from falls, which can be fatal. In particular, women above the age of 50 in Singapore are reported to have the highest rate of fractures from osteoporosis in Asia.
Despite this statistic, there has been no local communications campaign catered to this target audience. To fill this gap, The Bone Bank, a public health communications campaign was designed to educate Singaporean women aged 42 to 58 about osteoporosis and its risk reduction measures.
The campaign aimed to increase awareness of the disease and how to reduce the risks associated with it through a three-way nutrition and exercise approach called ‘CDE’ – in short for Calcium, Vitamin D and Exercise.
The team created a video featuring health professionals from Sengkang General Hospital, on some common questions about osteoporosis. Watch it below and make a guess, which is a myth and fact!
The Highlights
Offering free yoga classes and goodie bags to encourage participants to exercise.
To spread the message that regular exercise is good for the bones, the team partnered with a yoga studio to offer free yoga classes for women. Yoga has been proven to help improve balance and flexibility and protect against falls that are the major cause of osteoporotic fractures.
The classes were held across the duration of the campaign, and class sizes were kept small to adhere to safe management measures. Instructors from the yoga studio led one hour-long session, where participants were taken through different yoga poses. These classes helped to emphasise how exercise like yoga can contribute to good bone health. Irene Tay, one of the participants, shared how the class reminded her of the importance of exercise and encouraged her to do so more regularly.
In addition to the complimentary classes, The Bone Bank also provided goodie bags for every participant. Each goodie bag came with calcium and vitamin D supplements, a campaign pamphlet with information on osteoporosis, as well as a fridge magnet that reminds participants of the daily requirements of calcium and vitamin D.
Using challenges during Chinese New Year to encourage participation in ‘CDE’.
To celebrate Chinese New Year, the team hosted a series of challenges during the festive season to encourage participants to practice ‘CDE’ and incorporate them into their daily lives. The challenges, held on Facebook, included cooking, exercise, and word search. Giveaways were also held in conjunction with these challenges.
For the cooking challenge, participants were encouraged to share dishes rich in calcium and vitamin D that they were cooking for Chinese New Year, by commenting on a Facebook post. The purpose of the challenge was to get participants to correctly identify food rich in these nutrients and incorporate them into their diet. Many participants shared pictures of what they had prepared for their meals and highlighted items that were rich in calcium and vitamin D.
For the exercise challenge, participants shared pictures of themselves performing weight-bearing and/or muscle-strengthening exercises, with a creative Chinese New Year element. The pictures were shared through comments on a Facebook post. The campaign received many submissions for this challenge, with participants sharing pictures of themselves carrying their babies and practising yoga – showing how easy it was for one to exercise.
In the word search challenge, the team wanted to get participants to read blog articles on the campaign website and drive home the message on the importance of taking care of one’s bones. Participants had to identify words highlighted in pink within the blog articles and string the words together to form the sentence “Investing in your bones is as easy as CDE”.
Increase in awareness of osteoporosis through the campaign’s efforts.
Through this project, the team managed to garner an increase in awareness of osteoporosis risk reduction measures, sense of self-efficacy of performing risk reduction measures, perceived subjective norms of performing risk reduction measures, and intention to adopt ‘CDE’ among middle-aged women. The Bone Bank was also featured on Singapore media, most notably in The Straits Times for International Women’s Day.
The Memories
Reflection #1 – The Challenges
Limited offline outreach due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the project was quite limited in offline outreach as mass events were not encouraged. Although the team had initially planned for on-ground events such as a roadshow, they were not able to hold one. To get around this, The Bone Bank decided to channel more resources to digital efforts, which the team felt was a more sustainable way given it did not involve human interaction. This would give the team greater control over what they could do for the campaign. The campaign expanded on digital efforts through more strategic social media tactics, such as gamified posts and giveaways, and a greater number of media buying. Despite the restrictions in offline outreach, the campaign managed to surpass the initial objectives set in terms of reach.
Slow initial growth in WhatsApp group.
At the start of the campaign, the team had some trouble in hitting the target number of WhatsApp group participants. Given the number of scam cases happening on WhatsApp, it was understandable that many in the campaign’s target audience were not willing to join the campaign group for fear of being victims of scams.
However, as the social media platforms got progressively more active, the team saw a steady rise in the number of group members. They attributed this to the social media platforms driving participants to join the WhatsApp group. This was further enhanced by the media mention The Bone Bank received in The Straits Times article, which lent credibility to the campaign and further increased the number of participants.
Reflection #2 – The Takeaways
Always stay on the lookout for alternatives.
From this project, the team reflected that they had learnt the importance of looking for alternatives when presented with problems. They had experienced offline outreach challenges concerning COVID-19 restrictions. However, they managed to get around this by engaging the audience online instead. The campaign did so through their Facebook page and website, in which the team created opportunities for them to engage with the audience through their content.
Campaign experience helped the team be better prepared to take on challenges.
Besides offline outreach challenges, the team also faced initial challenges in getting participants to join the campaign’s WhatsApp group. To tackle this problem, they made use of other channels to promote the chat group, as well as media mentions which encouraged more participants to eventually the group.
The challenges that the team faced and the ways around them showed them that they should meet challenges head-on. There will always be a solution to a problem which may require them to sometimes think out of the box. The team reflected that they have since learnt to never give up when faced with challenges and to instead develop creative solutions to tackle these issues.
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