EM Forum Presentation — February 27, 2013

Who Depends On You?
A Public Education Campaign To Move People From Intention to Action

Mary Schoenfeldt
Public Education Coordinator
Office of Emergency Management
City of Everett, Washington

Amy Sebring
EIIP Moderator

This transcript contains references to slides which can be downloaded from http://www.emforum.org/vforum/Outreach/WhoDependsOnYou.pdf
A video recording of the live session is available at http://www.emforum.org/pub/eiip/lm130227.wmv
MP3 format at http://www.emforum.org/pub/eiip/lm130227.mp3
or in MP4format at http://www.emforum.org/pub/eiip/lm130227.mp4
 


[Welcome / Introduction]

Amy Sebring: Good morning/afternoon everyone and welcome to EMForum.org. I am Amy Sebring and will serve as your Host and Moderator today and we are very glad you could join us.

Today’s topic is entitled “Who Depends on You?  A Public Education Campaign To Move People From Intention to Action.”  This campaign recently won an award from IAEM and was also nominated for a Washington State Cities of Excellence Award.  We hope this information will be of benefit to you in your own outreach efforts.

[Slide 1]

Now it is my great pleasure to introduce today’s speaker:  Mary Schoenfeldt serves as Public Education Coordinator for the City of Everett, Washington Office of Emergency Management and she has been in the field of Emergency Management and Public Education for over 25 years. Among her many activities, she also developed and taught Disaster Psychology courses in two Emergency Management/Homeland Security degree programs, and has traveled internationally to teach on a variety of topics.

Please see today’s Background Page for further biographical details and links to related resources, including some downloads that Mary will mention today.

Welcome Mary, and thank you again for taking the time to be with us today. I now turn the floor over to you to start us off please.

[Presentation]

[Slide 1]

Mary Schoenfeldt: Thank you, Amy and thanks for you for moderating today.  Also, thank you to EM Forum and all of you who have joined us.  As Amy read in my bio you can see I am pretty fascinated with human behavior and why we do things and why we don’t do things.  Which is why doing public education in an emergency management division keeps me awake at night in an excited way to try to figure out how to motivate people.

Public education is a difficult task.  Those of us who do this know it is very difficult to motivate someone to do something unpleasant that they may or may not ever need.  What we need to do is to move people from awareness to intention.

[Slide 2]

We are bombarded with messages to the point that we actually stop listening.  My daughter lives near a nuclear storage site in another part of Washington State.  When we developed this “Who Depends on You” campaign I was pretty excited when I heard that a radio ad would be playing in her area.  I called her to be a proud mom and wanting her to be a proud daughter—I called her and asked her if she had heard it.

Her response to me surprised me.  What she said was, “Mom, we get so many of those I don’t even listen to them anymore.”  How many of you have kids who just simply tune you out?  It’s the same challenge—trying to get people to hear the message that is going to make a difference.

[Slide 3]

Let’s look at the definition—definitions between motivation and education.  We call our field public education but what we really need to be doing is really motivating people.  Education is passive.  Motivation is much more active than that.

[Slide 4]

My guess is that many of you listening in know who Dennis Milleti is.  He is considered to be the expert in social science when it comes to preparedness education.  Dennis says that if we only give information but we don’t move people from awareness to intention to action that when the big one hits we are going to have a lot of very educated dead people.

[Slide 5]

I agree with Dennis.  If knowledge were enough we’d all eat vegetables, cut down on salt, stay away from fatty foods, get enough sleep, exercise regularly, drive the speed limit, not work too much, take our vacations, stay home when we’re sick and wash our hands. Hmm, knowledge doesn’t do it.  Let’s look at motivation and see where we are.

[Slide 6]

If knowledge were enough we would do all the things that we hear about that we know are best for us.  Let’s talk about motivation.  I don’t believe I am a lot different from other people in the world and my guess is that you aren’t either.  When I’m looking at public education I try to think of what makes a difference and motivates me personally.

Let me ask you a question.  Why did you get up this morning?  The alarm went off and you jumped out of bed with excitement yelling, “Yippee! I can’t wait for another day of listening to a webinar on a set of speakers that crackle and try to pay attention to my computer screen when I have a long list of other things to do … listening to someone speak about something I already know something about ….and might even be able to do a better job of presenting so I hope it is at best interesting and but know that at worse it might be very boring.”

[Slide 7]

If that is how you woke up this morning, I think you are an unusual person and should probably take your temperature and go back to bed.  That is not why we do it.

[Slide 8]

Why did you join us today?  What motivated you to spend your time with us?  Was it responsibility to yourself, responsibility to others, guilt, accountability, responsibility, or anticipation of a good outcome?  Each one of us has our own answer to that.  There is something that motivates us.

[Slide 9]

What is it?  What gets your attention?  What moves you from good intentions to action—from point A to point B?

[Slide 10]

There are some successful industries out there that I am intrigued by when I am thinking about public education and how to motivate people to do what it is that I know is in their best interest.  Some of those successful industries are the insurance industry—I personally really dislike writing a check for insurance every month, yet I do it.  I have been motivated to do that.  We can learn from that.

Dental hygiene is another successful industry.  We do a good job of taking care of our teeth in a preventive measure and the same with preventative medicine.  Car maintenance and the Skil Corporation are listed on the slide.  The Skil Corporation is one that has fascinated me for years because they sell drills and saws. 

The way they marketed that is they really didn’t sell drills—they really sold holes.  They sold the solution to the problem—not the problem or the tool.  I think there are things we can learn from those kinds of industries.  When we as a country and as a world were looking at the H1N1 flu—hand washing—I started thinking after that what the motivation was that had everyone washing their hands.  Again, we can learn from this as we are looking at public education campaigns for our emergency preparedness message.

[Slide 11]

The motivator for H1N1, at least in my experience, was peer pressure.  Everyone else is doing it and if I don’t wash or sanitize my hands, my thought process is, “This is good for me but even more important is people will notice if I am not.”  There were frequent media reminders.  It was a pretty consistent message that included information but also included personal stories so we could connect with the people who were doing the same things we were doing.

There were signs in public places specifically asking us to do something.  It was very specific, “Please use hand sanitizer before you come into this office space.  Make sure you cover your cough.”  There were very specific kinds of messages.

There was an education about the risk—what will happen if I don’t.  The message was simple and visual.  These are all things we can learn from.

[Slide 12]

Convincing people to do something to prevent something they believe might never, even happen is a difficult thing.  Public education is tough.  People don’t change easily.

[Slide 13]

If we look at what motivates people and there are professional marketers who study this extensively and know how to get us to buy their products—some of the persuasive motivators are: image—what will people think of me?  Peer pressure—are my friends doing it?  Lastly on this list is responsibility—am I doing something only because I need to do it or am I responsible for something or someone else?

[Slide 14]

The “Who Depends on You—Are You Prepared for Disaster” campaign is based on that motivator of responsibility.  It doesn’t say to me personally, “Are you able to take care of yourself?”  My answer might be, “Yes, I am.”

It really asks me, “Who are those other people in the world that look to me?”  That hooks into my sense of responsibility.  It also makes me feel bigger, tougher and stronger in some ways. 

[Slide 15]

The “Who Depends on You” campaign engages the audience in a questioning process.  It allows us to have some discussion about dependency.  That is not an easy subject.  I don’t want to think I am dependent on someone else.  That flies in the face of my feeling competent and adequate sometimes.

We have found out and have been pleasantly surprised that it can be used in any setting.  I have yet to find any setting that we can’t reframe the message where “who depends on you—are you prepared for disaster” doesn’t fit.  It is interactive.  The audience cannot answer simply a yes or a no.

If we use the message, “Are you prepared?”, then they can say yes or no and then go on.  “Who depends on you?”  is a different type of questions and it requires thought rather than a quick answer.

[Slide 16]

Here is some of the design and some of the overall strategy we began this campaign with.  We looked at target markets.   By target markets we mean deciding who we are messaging to and then very specifically designing to that population if you will.  Branding is where we can all look at the golden arches and we know what company that is.  We can fill in the blanks.

The message doesn’t have to be written and we don’t have to read it to know what that is.  That is branding.  The design was to be able to frame all public education messages and we have been pleasantly surprised in that we have yet to find a population that we cannot reframe it.  It is designed to get intention.

It is designed to be the “why”.  The “what” message comes later—the specific messages and that is a continuing phase of this campaign.  The purpose is to nudge people to take some kind of action.

[Slide 17]

There is a lot of public education theory out there.  I referenced Dennis Milleti earlier.  There is other research done by an organization called the Hebert Research Foundation.  Then there is the Wisdom of Petra Fuzzbucket.  Let me tell you who Petra Fuzzbucket is and I’ll tell you about my process about public education.

[Slide 18]

When I was thinking that I’m not that unique or that much different from other people, why is it that I’m not prepared?  I certainly know better.  My thought process was that I only have to be concerned about myself.  I can take care of myself.  My kids are going to take care of my grandkids.  I’ll do it later.

What got my attention was walking up the driveway one day with my dog that had been a rescue dog that came into my life and her name was Petra.  As we were walking up the driveway she was looking up at me with adoring eyes as only a dog can do and I realized that if something happened to me and I was not as prepared as I could or should be, who is going to take care of her?

Then I realized that I am much more willing to do something for someone else whether they are a human person or fur person than I am for myself.  The example I give when I give presentations is that I may be driving home from work after a long day and I realize I am out of liquid French vanilla creamer for my coffee for the next morning.

I’ll go through this whole process in my head about whether or not I am going to stop and buy it. Most likely I will decide that I’m too tired and there is powdered creamer at home and I’ll get by.  But if I am driving home and I realize that Petra is out of what we call bedtime cookies, which is her snack before we go to bed, I am going to stop and do that for her.  I am much more likely to do something for someone else.

That is the theory of responsibility for someone else.

[Slide 19]

When we are looking at target markets to go back to what we have learned from other industries, what we want to do is think about what groups we want to reach.  Is it families with young children?  Is it pet owners?  Is it rural families?  Whatever your market is—and then we design our method and our message to reach that particular population.

[Slide 20]

Pet owners, we have discovered through some studying and research on who depends on you, that people at least in our area are more prepared to take care of pets than they are of even their own children as far as having some kind of a disaster plan and kit in place.  So by targeting pet owners with some very specific kinds of giveaways and messaging, we can get the “who depends on you” out there to them.

[Slide 21]

Target marketing—key questions to answers that we want to answer as we are doing this and what matters to them.  It is not what we want them to hear but what they need to hear.  How do they get information so that our marketing delivery system changes depends on how a particular segment of our population might get information—is it only through social media?

If we’re doing billboards and they are getting their messages through social media, we are missing them.  What images are most appealing and least appealing?  There are some we simply wouldn’t use.  What do we want to avoid in this group when we are marketing to them?

[Slide 22]

Looking at this campaign and what we have done in this area and actually we have shared this campaign around the country.  I am excited that we are sharing it even more now.  Some of the outcomes we have seen in the Puget Sound area in Washington is we have done a lot of bus signs, a lot of billboards and we’ve done all of our city employee training around the message of “who depends on you”.

We are talking about not only does the employer and our city is somebody that is depending on our employee; but so are the citizens, families and neighbors.  We can reframe it around any population.  We have done a lot of handouts and brochures.  In a few more slides I will show you where you can get those for your use.

We have used it to bridge conversations with local veterinarian hospitals, nursing homes, daycares, assisted living.  We have done posters in both public and private places.  We have done a number of presentations where we have used “who depends on you” as the frame.

[Slide 23 - 26]

What I’m doing now is showing you some of the ads and things that have been available and are available to you.

[Slide 27]

I say when I do presentations that I frame it in a game.  I’m not going to show you the whole game by any means but I’m going to show you the first couple of slides and the last couple of slides of the game.  We start the game with “How prepared are you?”

[Slide 28]

We ask a series of questions that always starts with “Who depends on you?” and then it goes through the list.  The answer pops up that maybe it is all of the above.

[Slide 29]

The second question that I am showing for you is “Each person should be prepared for how many days of an emergency—seven, thirteen, one, three?”  The answer I have in the slide presentation in the slide presentation is three because it gives me the opportunity to have that discussion about three being the absolute minimum. 

We are actually changing in the emergency management world what our recommendations are and it gives me a place to do that.  You can customize this to whatever the message is you are trying to get across.

[Slide 30]

In this item there is a little bit of humor.  “Which item does not belong in your emergency kit?”  The answer is dust bunnies.  It gives me another place to have a conversation with them.

[Slide 31]

There is one here I show about water.

[Slide 32]

This slide you are seeing is the blah, blah, blah and we go on to the end of the game.

[Slide 33]

But the game always ends with a couple of final questions.

[Slide 34]

One of those is the question again—“Who depends on you?”  This time it is directed back to them and it says that only you can answer.  I can’t answer that for you.  You know who it is that is depending on you.

[Slide 35]

The next one is—“What can you do today?”  It is asking them to take very specific action, not just the education but actually motivating them to take action.  Again, the answer is that you have to decide.  It is not my place to tell you what it is I want you to do.  You make that decision.

[Slide 36]

The final question is—“Will you do that for me?”  According to the game there is only one option really, and that is, “Yes, I will”. 

[Slide 37]

Another motivator we have found is that accountability is a huge motivator.  Will you do that for me?   Research tells us that this one simple question greatly increases the number of people who will follow through, in other words, move from that position of intention to action. Once again it is responsible to someone else and it is even better if we can get them to say, “Yes, I will do XYZ” to someone they know—it increases the chances.

[Slide 38]

We have done a lot of giveaways and do-dads.  We have done pens and rather than the pen with just a single message on it, we invested in some that when you click on the pen there is a rotating chamber inside and the question actually changes.  They are all done in questions—not a statement, but a question.  The pen—I am holding it in my hand and I know you can’t see it. 

On the barrel of the pen it leads people to a website.  Everything we are doing we are leading people back to one central place.  That website is http://www.whodependsonyou.com  and I will show you that in a minute.  As you click through the pen is asks questions like—do you have a pet emergency kit?  Do you have food for disaster?  Do you have water for a disaster?  Do you have a family emergency plan?

People have told us it has been very effective.  Shopping bags—we took the typical shopping bag but we printed the list of items to pick up at the supermarket on the outside of the shopping bag.  As they take it, and it is a reusable shopping bag, they always have that list with them.  We have done other kinds of giveaways as well.

Another one that has been pretty unique is that we have printed coffee sleeves, the kind of sleeves you get when you go by your local coffee stand in the morning.  It is actually a set of four different coffee sleeves.  There are two questions on each one.   There are questions like –do you have an out of area contact card for your whole family?–on one side.

On the other side it is—do you know which neighbors might need extra help in a disaster?  On another one—if you couldn’t get home for the next 48 hours, what would you do?  The other side of that one is—how would you reach your family in a disaster? 

The design is that if you go by your local coffee stand every morning and you get a different coffee sleeve, over the course of a couple of weeks you are going to be confronted, or at least it is going to be surfaced, that you have eight different messages coming at you.  It has been interested to watch people come back to our office saying they have a coffee sleeve from somewhere.  They’ve been pretty excited about that.

[Slide 39]

We also have shared the message.  We are a big believer in partnerships because not one of us is going to be able to all this education ourselves.  We want to make sure we partner through our state emergency management division.  We have partnered with our individual counties here in Washington.  The Boeing Corporation and Fred Meyers—Fred Meyers is a local west coast company but they are similar to Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart has used some bits and pieces of “Who Depends on You” and we have done a research project with Western Washington University.  What we have found is that even when we are doing research we are educating.  So it has been a very successful partnership outreach.

The photo you see in the slide is of two Native American women and the campaign is designed that you can customize it for your target population.  We have a number of tribal entities here in the State of Washington.  We gladly shared it and they took it and put their own pictures of their own elders into the message. They were delighted at how effective that was because it personalizes it.

[Slide 40]

Sustainable messages—we didn’t want to just simply do a “here it is once” but we know that if people are really going to take action they need to hear messages multiple times before it sinks in and they take that action.  The grocery bags were an effort at that sustainable and the coffee sleeves definitely so, the pens and again we bring everybody back to a single point of information and that is the “Who Depends on You” website.

From there you can click into most anything, any piece of information, that anybody could need whether that is from a federal source like FEMA or ready.gov, a local state emergency management, Red Cross or the health district, but to bring them back into local by bringing them back into the “Who Depends on You” website.

[Slide 41]

Here is a screenshot of the website.  It is very simple.  There is not a lot of content necessarily but there are an awful lot of links.  That is what we want people to do—to be able to find the information quickly and get the information they need, and sticking with the branding of “Who Depends on You—Are You Prepared for Disaster?”

[Slide 42]

About halfway down or maybe three quarters of the way down the website you’ll see a section that says “Features—Download this:  Who Depends on You”.  That link is for you—for those of you listening in and who are interested in what we have done as far as designing brochures, posters and various parts of this campaign.  You don’t need to start over again.  Take what we have done.  Link through this part of the webpage and there are templates, meaning that there are brochures that are already done on pets, or important documents, older and elderly issues, and then there is a place on those where you can drop in your own specific information, logo, and telephone numbers.  There are places that will allow it to become yours.  It is very much for the taking.

[Slide 43]

To close up here and open it up for your questions—“Who Depends on You”—that is “the why’ you got up this morning when the alarm went off.  That is the motivation—because there is someone depending on you, something you need to get done, or someone you are responsible for. 

”The what” you need to do now that you are up—that is the specific information that the next phase will look at but also collaborates “Who Depends on You” with other sources of specific action items and informational kinds of websites or campaigns.  “Who Depends on You” is a partner in a collaborative campaign that goes with “Are You Ready”, “Three Days Three Ways” and “What To Do To Make It Through” and any number of other kinds of public ad campaigns.

[Slide 44]

To wrap this up and then give you the floor—who depends on you and what are you going to do to be better prepared?  You won’t do anything if you just stay educated and you don’t take that next step and take some action.  My contact number and email are up there, and the website, http://www.whodependsonyou.com .  I would very much like to support your efforts if this is something you think would be useful in your community. 

Please let me know what I can do to help.  Amy, I am going to turn it back to you now.  We can take questions or just have some discussion.

Amy Sebring: Thank you very much Mary. That is wonderful. I will put this contact information back up at the end of the program. That link to the download materials Mary was describing is on our background page and we will get it into the transcript.

[Audience Questions & Answers]

Question:
Amy Sebring:  How long has your program been running?

Mary Schoenfeldt:  Amy I think we started it four years ago or maybe three years—long enough that it has been in the community.  Because of funding and because of bits and parts and pieces there has been high visibility, low visibility—kind of the roller coaster of public education.  We have been at it now long enough that it has been researched.  We hear it is not the end-all-be-all but it is effective.

Amy Sebring:  I’m sure part of that has to do with being able to sustain it over time.

Mary Schoenfeldt:  Absolutely.  A single message isn’t going to resonate and change behavior.  It simply isn’t. It has to be a continuous and credible message.  One of the other reasons that we have been successful and I don’t remember the exact study but there is some study that people need to hear the same message seven times from different credible sources before it sinks in and we get behavior change.

We have used it in public places like the library and city hall.  At sporting events we have done a lot of public education so that if people are going to the hockey game they see it there as well as their child bringing something home from school and then seeing it on a billboard as they drive to work, or they come to a neighborhood meeting and they hear it again.

Question:
Rocky Lopes: Great work! Impressive! Wondering, have you conducted evaluation to know what people who were exposed to this campaign actually did do to improve personal preparedness? Any results?

Question:
Mary Woodward:  Do you have any measurement tools to determine success and how do you define success?

Mary Schoenfeldt:  How do you define success?  Behavior change is a difficult one to define.  As far as research, we have done some research.  It has been local and in some ways possibly limited.  Western Washington University did a yearlong study of the campaign starting with some pre-surveys and then post-surveys after we got the message up.

What we found is that it did change.  I’ll read a couple of things from these.  It says, “Those familiar with the campaign were more likely to have discussed preparedness, often in connection with a disaster event on the news.”  What that says to me is that people are thinking about who depends on you watching the news and saying, “If this were our community, what would we do?”

It goes on to say in the executive study that they were also more likely to have stored food and water and to have replenished it in the last six months.  People were more likely to have had a family emergency plan, battery-operated radio, etcetera than those who were not familiar with the campaign.

There is also some strategies that they suggested that I thought were very interesting.  Promoting material at community events appears to be a good strategy for reaching homeowners while busses and billboards seem to be more effective with renters.  That was intriguing information about that target marketing.

Another piece out of the research says that community based social marketing techniques which emphasize small steps, commitments and incentives may further enhance the campaign material.  We have measured it and it seems to be making a difference.  I don’t have the executive summary on the Who Depends on You website but if anybody is interested, email me and I’ll get it.  Amy I can get it to you and you can make it available.  [Note: The entire report can be accessed from http://www.emforum.org/vforum/Outreach/WWUWDOYreport.pdf ]

Question:
Sarah Green:  What was the most successful approach in your efforts to engage the business community to get employee programs in place at Boeing and Fred Meyer?

Mary Schoenfeldt: Interesting question—we started by offering them posters that could go in their employee break room.  What we found was that for a private corporation like Boeing, or Wal-Mart, a grocery store or PetSmart to put it for public consumption, there is a corporate process.  We started by simply asking them to put it up in their employee break room.

We also put together a one page informational sheet based on some of the Small Business administration information about what kinds of businesses will survive, which ones won’t, and what makes the difference.  Employer preparedness is the bottom and that is the foundation.

From there we created a diagram that is a pyramid that shows employer preparedness is the foundation to be able to survive and be a viable part of the recovery of a community.  We made personal contact with businesses, both small and large.

Question:
Isabel McCurdy:  What time of the year do you do these community campaign messages?

Mary Schoenfeldt:  It is ongoing.  There are times we are more visible than other times, but it is not seasonal.  There are some campaigns that are seasonal like we have one here in the Pacific Northwest called “Take Winter by Storm” that runs at a certain time of the year but the  “Who Depends on You” is continuous.

Question:
Ray Pena: Does the program reach out to children in elementary grades? If yes, how young are the children reached?

Mary Schoenfeldt: Ray, we have not reached into elementary schools as much as we might.  It is one if those things we think about doing but to penetrate a school system is difficult because they are so inundated with people who want to do that.  What we did with schools rather than coming into classrooms is we did a program for all the administrators wrapped around “Who Depends on You—Are You Prepared for Disaster?”

We did it for administrators on personal preparedness for their staff and we did a “train the trainer” where I put the presentation together and I went to administrative meetings, did the presentation and provided them with a basic presentation on personal and family preparedness that they then could take to their staff depending on what their limitations were for staff time for any kind of education.

We have infiltrated, if you will, the schools but from a different level than the classroom up.  We have done it from the administration down focusing on employee preparedness with the employees being school staff.

Question:
Amy Sebring:  Have you had an opportunity to take this campaign out into the social media?

Mary Schoenfeldt:  We have not and part of that is my personal challenge with technology.  They say there are natives and immigrants when it comes to technology and social media.  I’m old enough that I am always going to be an immigrant when it comes to social media.  We just have not.  I would love to see someone take it out to social media and see what we can do with it.

Question:
Rocky Lopes:  Now that Washington participates in The Great ShakeOut, do you connect messaging between that event and “who depends on you?” Seems like a good connection.

Mary Schoenfeldt:  Rocky, you are fabulous.  I forgot to mention that.  We designed for the City of Everett—we have about a thousand employees—we designed an employee challenge wrapped around “Who Depends on You” for the Shake Out and it was highly successful meaning that if I had gotten ten city employees to participate I would have been delighted.

We got about 150 employees to participate.  The first time out I was really excited by that.  Again we wrapped the whole thing around “Who Depends on You—Are You Prepared For A Disaster?”  Then we did a series of challenges starting six weeks out from the Shake Out, starting with simple things like a word search and then ending with the day of the Shake Out and looking around your desk and figuring out where it is you are safe.

Is there something you can do to make your personal work environment safer?  We asked employees to figure out an alternative route to and from work.  Yes we did tie it with the Shake Out and it was a very successful collaboration between those two programs.

Question:
Avagene Moore:  Mary, I like your approach.  Since FEMA is always looking for new ways to prepare our citizens, are they aware of your program?  I can envision this as a very viable national campaign.

Mary Schoenfeldt:  I appreciate that.  I have been in meetings with FEMA representatives where we have talked about it.  I don’t think I have had the conversation with the right person within FEMA.  The feedback that I’ve gotten that I always get is that it is a very viable program.

I don’t know how to make the connection to FEMA to make it a national program but I agree.  I think it is one of those messages that resonate.  It is not the end-all-be-all.  There is a lot more information that needs to come behind it but it seems to get people’s attention.

Question:
Amy Sebring:  Do you have any specific plans in the future in terms of this campaign?

Mary Schoenfeldt:  Where we’re going with it next is we are looking at the next phase about getting more specific about the kinds of actions.  Now that we have your attention this is what we’d like you to do.  We haven’t come up with the specifics of what that will look like, again because we don’t see this as being the end-all and the only program out there. 

We continue to share it in absolutely every way we can.  That is why I went to the International Association of Emergency Management Conference and shared it there.  That is why I am delighted to share it today with all of you.  We just keep working on it because it seems to be a message that makes sense to people.

Question:
Amy Sebring:  Have you taken it to universities?  I know you mentioned Western Washington University in terms of research but as far as outreach to universities.

Mary Schoenfeldt:  We have actually and University of Washington uses this campaign as the frame.  In the discussion with the preparedness coordinator at the University of Washington we had a long discussion over a cup of coffee about who really depends on a university student—so how do you reframe this?

What we came to is that it does fit—university students definitely depend on each other so friends depend on them and their parents depend on them to be okay.  That has been one of the reframes I have had to do in the senior population also.  I went to do a presentation at a senior residential facility and people are looking at me—eighty years old with their walkers saying, “Nobody really depends on me.”

But we reframed it to maybe they are not depending on you to grab the backpack out of the car and bring it in but they are depending on you to be okay.  We were able to reframe and it fit.  It fits with universities as well.

Question:
Avagene Moore: Has anyone from Citizen Corps or even individual CERT programs used your program?  I believe it would be excellent.

Mary Schoenfeldt:  We do a lot of work with Citizen Corps and we have a very active CERT program.  We have not made a specific connection between the two.  That intrigues me and I’ll have to think about that and figure out how we can make that connection.

[Closing]

Amy Sebring: I think you have done such a wonderful job covering this we are going to wrap it up a little early today. I have put your contact information back up here so people can get in touch with you. We’ll be looking forward to getting that executive summary and up on our background page.

On behalf of Avagene, myself, and all our participants today, thank you very much Mary for joining us today and sharing these wonderful ideas.  We wish you continued success in the future.

Mary Schoenfeldt: Thank you, and thank everybody who joined us, because public education is not a single person’s job by any means, so I greatly appreciate everyone’s efforts to continue to educate. Not just educate but to motivate!

Amy Sebring: Folks, before you go, PLEASE take a moment to do the rating and enter any additional comments you may have. 

Our next program is scheduled for March 13th.  Please make plans to join us then and watch for our announcement.

Have a great afternoon everyone!  We are adjourned.