Background:
Marketing Partners has assisted a team of healthcare and dental workforce development partners to promote October as Health Care Careers Awareness Month throughout the state of Vermont for the past four years.

This year, the campaign included development and design of a new website landing page with three interactive components at www.vthealthcareers.org. The new website landing page was designed to educate, engage, and interest Vermont's youth to pursue health careers. These new interactive aspects included a quiz that provided the visitor multiple career options that suited his/her "personality." The site also included a fun terminology test and matching game based on real-life health care professionals.

Marketing Partners also coordinated with Montpelier High School to host the month's kick off event, which included healthcare and dental professionals participating in a school-wide assembly. The kick-off included a panelist discussion with question and answer session for the professionals, highlighting the positive aspects of working in dentistry, nursing, primary care, and pharmacology. Following the assembly, Vermont Governor Jim Douglas formally proclaimed October as Health Care Career Awareness Month and joined the students to play an interactive game called Plink-It!

Social media ( and ) provided effective avenues to further promote health care careers, since so much of the campaign was inherently interactive. Leading up to and following the kick-off event, Marketing Partners issued a series of "tweets" highlighting current Vermont health care employment statistics, facts, and figures. Marketing Partners also increased the campaign’s Facebook presence, with a campaign page and online ads - all driving to the website.

Target Audience:

• This annual campaign targets Vermont's youth, from age 13 to 25 years, as well as adults interested in pursuing a new or second career.

Materials Developed:

• Media Advisories, Calendar Announcements, Press Releases
• New webpage with three interactive games
• Online, geotargeted advertisements
• Facebook page, including video clips
• Month-long Twitter campaign
• Display Banners

Impact:

• Media coverage in state-wide papers, including the Times Argus, St. Albans Messenger, and Caledonian-Record
• Key partners were interviewed and discussed health care employment issues on Vermont Edition, broadcast on public radio station VPR
• More than 100 Facebook fans
• More than 3,000 visitors to www.vthealthcareers.org during October