The CNMI earned two gold and two silver awards for last year’s HPV immunization campaign as part of its cervical cancer prevention program. It also won one gold and one silver for its aggressive flu watch campaign.
According to Public Health program analyst Roxanne P. Diaz, they received the awards last week from the National Public Health Information Coalition, a non-profit organization of more than 200 public health information directors in the U.S.
The CNMI, which submitted its entries last month, has now also earned national recognition for best practices in public education and information dissemination concerning health care.
The goal of giving the national awards was to look for the best practices in the U.S. and to recognize those who are making a difference in reaching out to the people.
Diaz said Public Health is now getting calls from people asking “how we did it.”
“We thank the community and our collaborators for a job well done,” she said.
Public Health medical director Dr. Richard Brostrom commended the creativity of their community partners in the creation of the public information campaign.
Public Health, with the help of Stellar Marianas, launched the campaign advertisement that asked the public, “So, what are you going to do?”
During and after the first dose of HPV, the campaign posters told the public: This is what I’m going to do!”
Brostrom said it is important to go beyond medicine and science and think about the social marketing part of delivering the vaccine.
He said the creativity of the group behind the campaigns resulted in the successful vaccination of many young girls in the CNMI.
“It really took a lot of creativity to put the program together,” he said.
Public Health, Bostrom said, is proud to receive these awards which, he added, reflect a lot of hard work by the committee that includes the department, the Commonwealth Cancer Association and Stellar Marianas, the non-profit group that organizes Miss Marianas pageants.
