In the summer of 2023, the six Michigan health departments covering the entire Upper Peninsula teamed up to promote the importance of public health in their communities and raise awareness about the many services they provide. Broadcasting via social media posts, videos, radio ads, radio talk shows, cable and livestream TV commercials, and billboards, the Local Public Health Cares campaign depicts actual staff from the six health departments doing what they do best — delivering competent, caring services to the communities where they live. The campaign slogan states, “We live here. We work here. We care about you, your family and the communities we serve.”

“For three years, local health departments worked almost primarily on the COVID pandemic. So, the public started to associate local public health with COVID and only COVID — and of course, we do so many more things,” says Mike Snyder, health officer, Public Health, Delta & Menominee Counties. “The mission is to increase awareness of the services provided by local health departments, to build back some of the trust that may have been lost during the pandemic, and to strengthen the impact of local public health initiatives and programs.”

Public health helps protect the environment.

The campaign’s messaging is familiarizing Upper Peninsula residents with the wide range of services that their local health departments provide for all stages of life.

“It's always surprising to me that when we make presentations to community members or new employees or new board of health commissioners going through our orientation, they're always surprised at all the services that Public Health Delta Menominee offers,” Snyder says. “Currently, we have 52 different programs that we offer through the health department. People know of some of them, but they don't know everything we do. It's important to build that awareness that public health does so much more than inspections at restaurants, septic permits, and the WIC program.”

Public Health Delta Menominee worked with multiple radio stations from the Radio Results Network. Once a month, they did a live interview on a specific local public health topic. During the rest of the month, the stations aired relevant clips from the conversation.

“Every month we'd have a different topic. It might be family planning, our WIC program, environmental health,” says Dayna Kapp, Public Health Delta Menominee emergency preparedness coordinator. “We talked to Michigan Department of Health and Human Services about this program, and they came up, first, with funding to help us pay for the radio spots and, eventually, you know, for the Local Public Health Cares campaign.”

"We live here, we work here and we care about you and your family."

The other five U.P. health departments involved are Chippewa County Health Department, Dickinson-Iron District Health Department, LMAS District Health Department, Marquette County Health Department, and Western Upper Peninsula Health Department.

“We all tried to launch the campaign together on the same day and share messaging,” Kapp says. “I love the positive messaging, messaging that shows how we positively impact people's lives every day in public health. Public health doesn't stop at county lines. We're all working together to keep all the residents of the Upper Peninsula healthy.”

The representatives from the health departments have included a mix of emergency preparedness staff, health promotion staff, nurses, and public information officers. The U.P. 's health departments are reporting increased web traffic as a result of the campaign, as is the Local Public Health Care's website. Since the campaign launch,  the site has had 2,800 website views. Some of the health departments have launched new websites as part of this campaign.

Dayna Kapp“When somebody airs a commercial or a new billboard goes up, we see spikes in people visiting that page, and we see corresponding spikes in our individual agency web pages, as well,” Kapp says. “Dickinson Irons District Health Department was one of the departments that launched a new website. They launched in April of 2024, and they've had 2,200 website views since their launch. People are spending about a minute and a half on average perusing their site. We launched in June 2024, and we've had 2,500 new users. We're seeing that people are becoming more engaged with our website.”

Kapp shares that a state health department employee from the Lower Peninsula was driving through the U.P. and happened to hear a radio interview about Public Health Delta Menominee’s WIC program. She no doubt had seen some of the billboards, as well.

“She veered off course to come to our health department and stop in to let us know that she was super impressed with the campaign,” Kapp says. “She said others should be doing something similar, and that she was going to take it back to other state folks to tell them what she heard while traveling through the area listening to the radio.”
Mike Snyder
Snyder notes that the U.P.’s health departments have a long history of collaboration. Over the years, they have shared employees, partnered on community health needs assessments, and submitted grants together to fund shared projects.

“The state folks said that they wish all local health departments worked like we did. This is yet another example of how our partnership here in the U.P. works so well,” Snyder says.

What he likes best about the campaign is that it is raising awareness about how the local health departments work to keep everybody healthy.

“You know, we’re kind of the invisible profession. Nobody knows about us until there is a pandemic or a large outbreak of a communicable disease. Then we're front and center,” Snyder says. “But we're  working here every day making sure that the folks in the Upper Peninsula are healthy and have a healthy environment to live in.”

Estelle Slootmaker spends most workdays as a journalist and book editor. She also writes poetry and has two books underway: her great great grandmother’s memoir of childhood on Mackinac Island and a children's picture book. You can contact her at [email protected].  

Photos courtesy Local Public Health Cares campaign.

The Yours, Mine, and Ours — Public Health series highlights how our state's public health agencies keep us healthy, safe, and informed about issues impacting physical and mental health in our communities, homes, workplaces, and schools. The series is made possible with funding from the Michigan Association for Local Public Health.