Health Promotion Marketing Campaigns for Older Adults: CDC Still Going Strong vs. NCOA Falls Prevention Awareness Week (Essay Example)

Assignment: Health promotion marketing campaigns for older adults

For this assignment, you will examine the key elements of a health promotion program needed for a public and a private sector intervention. Take time to reflect on/research health, public health, and community health marketing campaigns that you have seen on TV, billboards, or online in the past year. Look at something that is about the elderly. Then, select one of these health marketing campaigns, and write an essay including the following:

• Describe the purpose of the campaigns. What is the purpose of the health campaign?
• Distinguish the social determinants of health.
• Analyze factors of program planning used for the campaigns.
• Explain the components of program planning models used for the marketing campaign in the public sector.
• Explain the use of needs assessments in developing these health campaigns. Do the campaigns ensure that they considered the needs of the targeted community? How?
• Examine the most common community health frameworks used in health promotion and determine whether either campaign includes them or not. If one does not, explain how it would have been beneficial for them to use one.
• Explain the differences between health education and health promotion and compare them with the campaigns.

Begin with an introduction. Your essay assignment should be at least four pages in length. Use at least three sources.

Original example for study purposes (about 1,700 words, roughly six double-spaced pages). If your instructor expects one campaign only, focus on Still Going Strong and use Falls Prevention Awareness Week as a comparison.

Introduction

As the U.S. population ages, preventing injuries among older adults has become a major public health priority. Falls are the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries among adults 65 and older. More than 14 million older adults, about one in four, report falling each year, and the age-adjusted fall death rate rose 21% between 2018 and 2024, from 64.7 to 78.4 deaths per 100,000 (CDC, 2026). Because falls threaten independence, quality of life and health care costs, both public and private organizations have created marketing campaigns to prevent them. This essay examines two campaigns seen online, on television and in communities over the past year: the CDC’s Still Going Strong campaign, a public sector intervention, and the National Council on Aging’s Falls Prevention Awareness Week, a private nonprofit intervention. The essay describes their purposes, the social determinants of health they address, the program planning factors and models they use, the role of needs assessment, the community health frameworks they reflect, and how each represents health education and health promotion.

Purpose of the campaigns

The purpose of Still Going Strong is to raise awareness of injury risks that increase with age and to empower older adults and their caregivers to take simple steps to prevent falls, motor vehicle crashes and traumatic brain injuries so that older adults can “stay connected, maintain their independence, and age without injury” (CDC, 2025). Its messages encourage actions such as talking to a health care provider about fall risk, reviewing medications, having vision checked, doing strength and balance exercises, making the home safer and wearing supportive shoes. The purpose of Falls Prevention Awareness Week is to raise national awareness and to activate communities to reduce falls through local events, fall-risk screenings, education and advocacy. In 2025, participating organizations in 41 states reached more than 925,000 people directly, and NCOA’s media efforts reached an estimated 17 million people (NCOA, 2025). Both campaigns share the goal of reducing falls, but the CDC campaign focuses on mass communication, while NCOA focuses on community action.

Social determinants of health

Social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, live, learn, work, play and age that affect health outcomes. Healthy People 2030 groups them into five domains: economic stability, education access and quality, health care access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, and social and community context (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion [ODPHP], n.d.). Each affects fall risk among older adults. Economic stability shapes whether older adults can afford home modifications, such as grab bars and better lighting, or supportive footwear. Education access and quality affects health literacy and the ability to understand medication risks and prevention advice. Health care access and quality determines whether a person receives fall-risk screening, medication review, vision care and physical therapy. The neighborhood and built environment includes home hazards, uneven sidewalks, poor lighting and lack of safe places to exercise, especially in rural areas. Finally, social and community context matters because older adults who live alone or are socially isolated may be less active and may lie on the floor for hours after a fall.

The campaigns address these determinants differently. Still Going Strong targets health care access by encouraging conversations with providers and addresses geography by placing ads in both metro and rural markets and creating tribal-specific ads (CDC, 2025). Falls Prevention Awareness Week addresses social and community context directly by bringing screenings and education to senior centers, Area Agencies on Aging, YMCAs and grocery stores, where older adults already gather (NCOA, 2025).

Factors of program planning

Effective health promotion programs consider several planning factors: a clearly defined priority population, measurable goals and objectives, evidence-based interventions, available resources, partnerships, communication channels and evaluation (McKenzie et al., 2022). Both campaigns define their priority population as adults 65 and older and their caregivers. The CDC used data to choose where to focus: states were selected for targeted ads based on the number of older adult injuries and injury-related deaths (CDC, 2025). The campaigns also rely on evidence-based content. Exercise programs that improve balance and strength reduce the rate of falls among community-dwelling older adults by about 23% (Sherrington et al., 2019), which supports both campaigns’ emphasis on staying active. In terms of resources, the CDC uses federal funding for paid media, while NCOA relies on a federal grant to its National Falls Prevention Resource Center and on the volunteer efforts of 150 state and community organizations (NCOA, 2025). Partnerships are central to the private campaign: 94% of participating organizations partnered with others, most often senior centers, health departments and Area Agencies on Aging (NCOA, 2025). Evaluation also differs. NCOA publishes an impact report each year with participation and reach data, while the CDC’s public materials describe the campaign’s reach and placement but provide less public information about measured behavior change.

Components of program planning models in the public sector campaign

Public sector health marketing campaigns commonly draw on planning models such as PRECEDE-PROCEED, MAP-IT and social marketing. The PRECEDE-PROCEED model (Green & Kreuter, 2005) begins with assessment phases (social, epidemiological, educational and ecological, and administrative and policy) and continues with implementation and process, impact and outcome evaluation. Still Going Strong reflects these components. Its epidemiological assessment is evident in the use of injury and death data to select states. Its messages address predisposing factors (knowledge and beliefs, such as the myth that falling is a normal part of aging), enabling factors (skills and resources, such as home safety checklists and exercise tips) and reinforcing factors (encouragement from caregivers and health care providers). The campaign also reflects social marketing, which applies marketing principles, the “four Ps” of product, price, place and promotion, to promote healthy behavior. The product is safer behavior such as exercise and medication review; the price is the effort or cost of change, which the campaign reduces by offering simple, low-cost steps; the place includes TV, digital, social media and provider offices; and the promotion uses positive, active images of older adults rather than frailty. Finally, the campaign connects to the CDC’s STEADI (Stopping Elderly Accidents, Deaths and Injuries) initiative, which gives clinicians tools to screen, assess and intervene, linking public messaging to health care practice.

Use of needs assessments

A needs assessment identifies the health problems, risk factors, resources and priorities of a target population before a program is designed. It usually combines secondary data, such as surveillance statistics, with primary data, such as surveys, focus groups and interviews with community members (McKenzie et al., 2022). Still Going Strong used secondary data from injury surveillance to target states with the greatest burden and recognized the specific needs of tribal communities and rural areas by creating culturally tailored ads (CDC, 2025). However, the public materials do not describe how older adults themselves were involved in shaping messages, so it is less clear how fully their preferences were considered. Falls Prevention Awareness Week builds needs assessment into its activities. Fall-risk screenings, including NCOA’s online Falls Free CheckUp, which more than 41,000 people completed in 2025, identify individual risk and generate data about community needs, and local organizations tailor their events to their own populations (NCOA, 2025). Because events are planned by local senior centers and health departments that know their communities, the private campaign is more likely to reflect local needs, although its quality varies across sites.

Community health frameworks

The most common community health frameworks in health promotion include the social ecological model, which recognizes that health is shaped by individual, interpersonal, organizational, community and policy factors; community-based participatory research and planning, which involves community members as partners; and Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP), a strategic planning framework used by local health departments to conduct community health assessments and improvement plans. Falls Prevention Awareness Week clearly reflects the social ecological model and community partnership approaches. It works at the individual level (screenings and education), the interpersonal level (caregivers), the organizational level (senior centers, YMCAs and EMS departments), the community level (local coalitions) and the policy level (governors’ proclamations in 16 states) (NCOA, 2025).

Still Going Strong operates mainly at the individual and interpersonal levels through mass media. It would benefit from a more explicit social ecological or participatory framework. For example, partnering with local coalitions and older adults to co-design messages would increase cultural relevance, and linking ads to community resources, such as evidence-based balance classes, home modification programs and transportation to appointments, would help older adults act on the messages. Addressing environmental and policy factors, such as safer sidewalks and Medicare coverage for fall prevention services, would also extend the campaign’s impact beyond awareness.

Health education versus health promotion

Health education is any combination of planned learning experiences designed to help individuals and communities improve their health by increasing knowledge or influencing attitudes and skills. Health promotion is broader: the World Health Organization defines it as “the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health,” which includes education but also changes to environments, organizations, policies and services (World Health Organization [WHO], 1986). Still Going Strong is primarily a health education campaign. Its main tools are messages, tips and resources that increase awareness and knowledge. Falls Prevention Awareness Week is closer to health promotion because it combines education with screenings, partnerships, community events, connections to evidence-based programs and policy advocacy (NCOA, 2025). The two approaches complement each other: national education campaigns create awareness, while community health promotion efforts help older adults turn awareness into action.

Conclusion

Falls among older adults are a serious and growing public health problem, and both public and private campaigns are needed to address it. The CDC’s Still Going Strong uses data-driven targeting, social marketing and PRECEDE-PROCEED components to educate older adults and caregivers through mass media. NCOA’s Falls Prevention Awareness Week uses partnerships, screenings and advocacy that reflect the social ecological model and a broader health promotion approach. Both consider social determinants of health such as health care access, rural and tribal geography and social isolation, but the community campaign does more to involve local organizations in identifying needs. The strongest strategy would combine the reach of a national public campaign with the participatory, multilevel approach of community programs, so that older adults not only learn how to prevent falls but also have the resources and environments they need to stay strong and independent.

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025, July 28). About Still Going Strong. https://www.cdc.gov/still-going-strong/about/

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2026, September 4). Older adult falls data. https://www.cdc.gov/falls/data-research/index.html

Green, L. W., & Kreuter, M. W. (2005). Health program planning: An educational and ecological approach (4th ed.). McGraw-Hill.

McKenzie, J. F., Neiger, B. L., & Thackeray, R. (2022). Planning, implementing, and evaluating health promotion programs: A primer (8th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

National Council on Aging. (2025). Falls Prevention Awareness Week 2025 impact report. https://www.ncoa.org/article/falls-prevention-awareness-week-impact-reports/

Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. (n.d.). Social determinants of health. Healthy People 2030. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://odphp.health.gov/healthypeople/priority-areas/social-determinants-health

Sherrington, C., Fairhall, N. J., Wallbank, G. K., Tiedemann, A., Michaleff, Z. A., Howard, K., Clemson, L., Hopewell, S., & Lamb, S. E. (2019). Exercise for preventing falls in older people living in the community. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (1), CD012424. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD012424.pub2

World Health Organization. (1986). Ottawa charter for health promotion. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/ottawa-charter-for-health-promotion