The Development, Implementation, and Evaluation of an Education-Based Health Promotion Social Media Campaign Targeting Elementary Educators

Elementary teachers are currently facing the untenable position of needing to do more with less following the educational disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The School of Health Studies (SHS) LEARN Lab is an open-access, evidence-based health resource repository designed to support teachers who are experiencing educational gaps among students in their classrooms. One strategy to increase the uptake of resources is through a health promotion social media campaign, specifically on Instagram and TikTok—two of the largest social media platforms used by teachers to seek out educational resources. As such, the purpose of this study was to develop, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness, based on key performance indicators (i.e., reach and engagement), of an 8-week health promotion social media campaign to increase engagement with the SHS LEARN Lab’s open access resource repository. Overall, the campaign was successful in increasing uptake of the LEARN Lab’s resources. Reach and engagement rates across platforms were above average, and a statistically significant difference between the reach rate across platforms was found during the campaign ( t (14) = 6.189, p < .001). Further, there was a statistically significant increase in average engagement rate on Instagram from baseline to during campaign ( t (7) = 6.871, p < .001). This study offers a template for future campaigns to follow when developing, implementing, and evaluating health promotion social media campaigns. Health promoters and decision-makers in the educational sector should consider social media as a cost-effective and feasible mechanism to increase teacher-specific supports.