The 2020-21 flu season poses new challenges in addressing COVID-19 alongside traditional challenges driving flu vaccination. Flu season for most adults typically begins around November and plans push reminders to have members schedule their flu vaccination. However, with COVID-19 as an ongoing concern, healthcare experts are suggesting getting the flu shot as early as September 2020, to at least quell the brunt of one virus while trying to manage the other. In addition, members who take precautionary measures early-on will alleviate pressure on hospital systems that have been carrying the weight of COVID-19.
Organizations must enhance their flu engagement strategies to address new concerns and barriers to vaccination this year and educate members quickly on new topics. With the right tools, health plans can take a multi-angled approach to member outreach that will help address and overcome several barriers at once. mPulse has been working with our customers to roll out new content and technology to help handle the challenges of this flu season—read about our 2020-2021 Flu Engagement Solution here. The solution incorporates digital fotonovelas. These are typically a 6-frame comic-style story portrayed with lighthearted graphics, that deliver important content to across demographic segments at scale. The story-style graphic can deliver vital educational flu resources directly to members’ mobile devices, through SMS and link-to-web, using members’ preferred language. This tool has been used in key healthcare use cases in the past, (e.g., value of HPV vaccines and diabetes self-management) and has proven to be a complementary route of communication when utilized with a text messaging approach to member outreach.
mPulse Mobile first deployed fotonovelas as a bi-lingual visual tool during the onset of COVID-19 as a part of the COVID-19 Rapid Rollout Toolkit solutions. The goal was to adapt a traditional and effective style of print media into digital format delivered through SMS, to help overcome health literacy barriers during a time when the spread of healthcare information was urgent and needed to be disseminated quickly at scale. The 6-frame graphic style of communication, paired with a series of check-ins via SMS, helped our plan and provider partners build health literacy around social distancing, basic hand hygiene, and keeps multi-lingual populations informed with accessible and coordinated outreach via mobile channels. The goal of this capability was to successfully assess members’ health risk and respond through text dialogue and educational fotonovelas appropriate for each member’s situation, in their preferred language. We’ve seen that when matched with strategic member outreach, fotonovelas can be a tool that offers an access point to fill in gaps in knowledge that drive healthy behavioral change even during a time when many are hesitant to seek out healthcare in person.
Fotonovelas also present an opportunity to address individual-level barriers and inaccurate health beliefs related to COVID-19, and flu vaccines in general. They can help address education gaps surrounding available flu vaccination resources during the pandemic while promoting health literacy. Paired with text message dialogues, plans and providers are able to uncover new barriers that may have prevented members to seek flu vaccinations early and match members to follow up content, including fotonovelas, that addresses those specific challenges.
During the 2019-2020 flu season, mPulse powered over 15,000,000 flu vaccination touchpoints across Medicaid, Medicare and commercial plan populations. The solution achieved a 2x increase in recorded flu vaccination rates in a large Medicaid population*. This year, as the flu season approaches with the added layer of COVID-19, plans and providers will need to more agile and responsive than years before.
For that reason, fotonovelas have become one of the core capabilities in our Flu Vaccination Solution for 2020-21. Fotonovelas engage a range of core population groups, including key multicultural segments with configurable content and versioning that enables matching to specific personas and demographics that can be updated over time. They can be a touchpoint that alerts members of appointment reminders, vaccination site locations and educational services. But the most powerful aspect of this form of outreach is the ability to tailor content based on an understanding of members health beliefs, in members’ preferred language and through their preferred channel. By listening to member responses to automated text conversations and understanding what they need to hear in order to get vaccinated, health care organizations can gather insights and deliver tailored and engaging outreach at scale. Because the solution is available on SMS and Link-to-Web it has the ability to reach a wider population at scale, meeting members where they are, taking pressure off of the member to seek out information during the height of the pandemic and flu season.
In a year of “unprecedented situations” the 2020-21 flu season is yet another that will require healthcare to evolve its approach. The reach, engagement and rich content provided by our fotonovelas strategy is a natural fit for the unique challenges of this flu season. Healthcare organizations know they have to do more this year than a strategy of 1-way reminder outreach and reliance on employer, church, or school vaccination drives. By creating conversational touchpoints around flu vaccination and supporting members with differentiated and rich content, they can elevate their engagement strategy to support the populations they care for.
