By Rebecca LaPorte, Madison County Public Health (Wampsville, NY)
The Challenge
In January 2022, only 58.1% of 18-25 year old Madison County residents were vaccinated for COVID-19. This percentage was low when compared to Central New York (66.8%) and New York State (82.8%) for this same age group. Our challenge was to find out how to reach this population through a marketing campaign. We wanted to utilize media platforms, find an event venue that was popular with the age group, and design a message that would reach this audience. Ultimately, our goal was to raise the percent of 18-25 year old Madison County residents vaccinated against COVID-19 to 70%.
The Solution
Once we determined that a marketing campaign was the direction we wanted to go, we partnered with a professional marketing company. The marketing company pitched the idea of a concert event with live music and opportunities within the event for vaccinations. It was coined “Get Your Shot Together”. Madison County Public Health Department then created an internal taskforce to handle the coordination and logistics of the event. For the location, we partnered with a local brewery in our county, called Good Nature Farm Brewery, who had proven to have great success attracting our target market. Good Nature was already holding music events every Sunday May through mid-September so we scheduled our event the Sunday after their official Sunday Summer Music Series ended (September 18, 2022). For entertainment, we booked three popular local bands, and also organized vendors and community partners to table during the event. This helped make this concert and vaccination event more like a health fair.
Results
During the event, we hoped to: 1. Increase the percent of people ages 18-25 with at least one COVID-19 dose from 60.6% to 61.6% 2. Increase the percent of people ages 18-25 with completed COVID-19 series from 55.1% to 56.1% 3. Have at least 10% of event attendees receive a COVID-19 vaccine 4. Draw in at least 30% more attendees than the average Good Nature concert event (goal = 390) *Please note metrics for objectives 1 and 2 differ from information in question 3 due to us updating the metrics right before our Get Your Shot Together Event In the end, we were not able to administer any doses of primary series COVID-19 vaccines to our target age group. However, we were able to meet our 3rd goal as we administered 70 COVID-19 vaccines during the event, vaccinating 11% of attendees. 10 of these vaccines were bivalent booster vaccines administered to our target age group. Our event had 636 attendees (112% greater than the average music event held at the venue). 461 of the attendees were under 21 years of age.
Lessons Learned
When exploring venue options, we were unable to use one venue due to them not wanting to align their brand with anything having to do with a vaccination event, especially a COVID-19 vaccination event. It’s a consideration we did not initially plan for. We also wish we were more involved with local events and activities occurring that we could have incorporated into our event. For example, the Sunday of our event was the day after the local college’s rush week events, which may have been nice to tie together with ours. Our goal was to target individuals 18-25 years of age who were not in college as the colleges had vaccination requirements. In retrospect, we wished we worked more with the college attendees so they could help spread the word about the event to the local community. The concept of a concert and health fair is something that could be replicated with other vaccines in other communities. It was a great way to connect with our community and an excellent opportunity to provide education and vaccinations. During our event, we were proud to have administered 70 COVID-19 vaccinations, 57 influenza vaccines, and 8 Tdap vaccines.
