Your Message Media

Public Health

Planned Parenthood Los Angeles Annual Report

“While the facts about numbers and donors are impressive, it is the layout, look and design that have really elevated this document into a wonderful community resource and teaching tool.”

These glowing words of praise for this year’s Planned Parenthood Los Angeles Annual Report, designed and produced by Your Message Media, came from PPLA’s Employee Training and Development Manager.

 

He went on to say, “…so impressed was I with your team’s hard work, I developed a new hire training module around it.  Participants now play a ‘treasure hunt’ game highlighting facts out of the report.  When we were finished I asked the group, usually pretty quiet, what they thought of the annual report.  Here is what they had to say: ‘It’s so professional.’‘It makes me proud to work for such a cool place.’ ‘I had no idea we were this far reaching.’ ‘It is so user friendly; anyone could get a clear snapshot of PPLA. I want my picture on the cover next year!’ ‘Can I keep it?  I have a friend who would love this and probably give a donation.’”

Planned Parenthood Los Angeles

Planned Parenthood Los Angeles needed updated collateral materials, including posters and client education pamphlets, in both English and Spanish. Together we created a new look for the the agency's health centers that unified the PPLA identity and communicated the agency's values: Teach, Care, Dream and Trust.

MIC-Women's Health Services

Working with MIC-Women's Health Services, a program of Public Health Solutions, YMM's Katie Kleinsasser co-created and implemented a New York City subway poster campaign educating the public about free and low cost options available for birth control, emergency contraception, and GYN care.

Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program

Historically, obesity has been addressed through interventions that focus on individual and behavioral change. People living in poor communities, however, often don’t have easy access to healthy foods and safe places to exercise and play.

Your Message Media is providing a broad range of communications support to help local and regional coalitions build healthy communities through policy changes such as menu labeling laws, healthy food in schools, increased physical education, work site wellness programs, improved park spaces, bike and hiking trails, safe routes to schools, etc. Our partners in this pioneering work include the Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program (CCROPP) and Healthy Eating Active Communities (HEAC) coalitions extending from Redding, California to Chula Vista. We have provided:

• Full-fledged communications capacity assessments for fifteen community-based coalitions in Northern, Southern and Central California;
• Strategic communication plans to help coalitions highlight the need for policy changes to fight obesity;
• Collateral materials such as brochures, flyers and banners in both English and Spanish;
• Comprehensive framing and messaging work;
• On-site media advocacy and skills training;
• On-camera spokesperson training;
• Web site design and content

This work typifies Your Message Media’s approach to communications work for non-profit organizations: building capacity, working in partnership, getting results.

Planned Parenthood of New York City

While Senior Vice President at Public Media Center, YMM's Katie Kleinsasser co-created the "Planning is Power" campaign for Planned Parenthood of New York City. Using positive, life-affirming imagery and copy, this campaign asserted that birth control means choosing pregnancy when and if you want it – giving women and families the power to plan their futures.

Community Action to Fight Asthma

The California Endowment funded Public Media Center to design a campaign directed at policymakers that called attention to California's growing asthma epidemic and measures that must be taken to curb its environmental triggers. YMM's Katie Kleinsasser conceived and wrote the campaign ads and support materials.

Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program

As part of the effort to increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables in small rural communities in California's Central Valley, residents of Pixley in Tulare County successfully piloted a weekly fruit and vegetable stand outside their local school. We worked with the Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program to produce a step-by-step guide for other groups interested in establishing a school-side fruit and vegetable stand as a way to improve access to healthy, affordable food in their own communities.

The California Endowment Prenatal Care for Immigrant Women Project

For many women, the risks of compromising one’s immigration status outweighs the benefits of getting care. This positive campaign emphasized the benefits of prenatal care, the availability of Medi-Cal and other coverage, and the accurate impact of applying for Medi-Cal for prenatal care on immigration status. YMM's Katie Kleinsasser acted as creative director on this effort at Public Media Center.

Healthy Eating, Active Living

In our work with groups around the state addressing obesity prevention, a consistent theme has emerged: "We need help framing this issue in terms of the need for policy change rather than personal behavior change, in language that the average person will understand." To help answer that need, Your Message Media developed a one-page formulation designed to effectively communicate this message. The old frame defines obesity as the problem and individual behavior change as the solution. In order to shift the solution to one that emphasizes policy and systems change, we have to shift the way we state the problem in the first place, away from the use of "obesity" as our starting point. Here we state the problem in terms of lack of access to healthy food and safe places to play, and present obesity as a consequence of the problem rather than the problem itself. This guide has proven to be extremely useful to local spokespeople as they present the case for environmental change to their communities, policy makers and the media.