HCR 406 Module 4 Health Communication Campaign Final Paper Example

Know Your Plan: A Peer-Led Health Insurance Literacy Campaign for ASU Students

Student Name

BS in Health Care Coordination, Arizona State University

HCR 406: Health Literacy for Health Care Professionals

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Know Your Plan: A Peer-Led Health Insurance Literacy Campaign for ASU Students

Introduction

For students handling coverage on their own for the first time, the challenge is a practical literacy task: understanding the words that decide what care costs and where they can get it. Know Your Plan is a semester-long campaign that teaches ASU students four core insurance terms and helps them find that information on their own plan before they need care.

Background and Rationale for the Target Segment

Confusion about coverage is not limited to students. In national surveys of adults with private coverage, most respondents could not correctly answer basic questions about the features of their plans, and they understood a simplified plan better than a traditional one with deductibles and coinsurance (Loewenstein et al., 2013). Beyond insurance, low health literacy in general goes along with greater use of emergency care, fewer preventive services and poorer medication use (Berkman et al., 2011). Coverage itself improves access and financial protection (Sommers et al., 2017), but only when people know how to use it. First- and second-year students were chosen because many are managing coverage for the first time, live in residence halls where peer outreach is practical and have not yet formed habits for seeking care. Formative research added international students, who often hold university plans with unfamiliar rules.

Conceptual Framework

In Health Belief Model terms, a student is most likely to learn a plan when a costly surprise feels both possible and serious, when learning looks easier than it is worth, when something triggers the effort and when the student trusts their own ability (Janz & Becker, 1984). In our pre-campaign survey, students rated their risk of an unexpected medical bill as low and the effort to learn their plan as high, and fewer than a third felt confident reading their plan summary. The campaign therefore raises perceived susceptibility with common scenarios, lowers barriers with a five-minute format and builds self-efficacy through guided practice with each student's own card.

The Campaign Message

The core message pairs the campaign name with a cue, the moment before care is needed, so the call to action and its timing arrive together. The supporting message, "Four words: deductible, copay, coinsurance, network," narrows the task to something manageable. In testing with 20 students, this version was preferred over a longer message listing plan features, because it sounded achievable.

Strategic Approach and Formative Evaluation

The central strategy is tailored, interactive peer education at plan check stations, supported by mass media and print. Tailoring was chosen because tailored print interventions produce small but reliable improvements in health behavior over generic materials (Noar et al., 2007), and in-person guidance allows tailoring to each student's plan type.

A pilot station in one residence hall served 48 students over two evenings. Strengths: students engaged when they worked with their own card, and post-check quiz scores were high. Limitations: some students did not carry their card or know their plan's app, which slowed checks; peer educators needed more training on Medicaid and international plans; and the format reached students already near the station rather than commuters. The campaign responded by adding a "find your card" step to the video, a one-page reference sheet for educators and a pop-up station in the student union.

Communication Channels and Supporting Evidence

Campaign Objectives

1. Reach: 1,000 students complete a plan check by the end of fall semester.

2. Knowledge: at least 70 percent of participants define all four terms correctly after a check.

3. Behavior: at a spring follow-up, six in ten participants can say whether the clinic they use is covered in network.

4. Process: 12 station events, 4 videos posted and 2,000 wallet guides distributed.

Conclusions

Know Your Plan addresses a health literacy gap that is common, consequential and fixable. Grounding the campaign in the Health Belief Model and in evidence on tailored communication led to a short, practical message and a hands-on strategy, and formative testing showed both its promise and its limits. If objectives are met, students will be better prepared to seek appropriate care without surprise costs, and the model could extend to other campuses or to newly insured community members.

References

Berkman, N. D., Sheridan, S. L., Donahue, K. E., Halpern, D. J., & Crotty, K. (2011). Low health literacy and health outcomes: An updated systematic review. Annals of Internal Medicine, 155(2), 97-107. https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-155-2-201107190-00005

Janz, N. K., & Becker, M. H. (1984). The health belief model: A decade later. Health Education Quarterly, 11(1), 1-47. https://doi.org/10.1177/109019818401100101

Loewenstein, G., Friedman, J. Y., McGill, B., Ahmad, S., Linck, S., Sinkula, S., Beshears, J., Choi, J. J., Kolstad, J., Laibson, D., Madrian, B. C., List, J. A., & Volpp, K. G. (2013). Consumers' misunderstanding of health insurance. Journal of Health Economics, 32(5), 850-862. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2013.04.004

Noar, S. M., Benac, C. N., & Harris, M. S. (2007). Does tailoring matter? Meta-analytic review of tailored print health behavior change interventions. Psychological Bulletin, 133(4), 673-693. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.4.673

Sommers, B. D., Gawande, A. A., & Baicker, K. (2017). Health insurance coverage and health: What the recent evidence tells us. New England Journal of Medicine, 377(6), 586-593. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsb1706645