As summer winds down in the U.S. and the colder months creep closer, so too does the annual respiratory virus season, when highly contagious diseases like influenza, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) make the rounds, resulting in hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations.
Hoping to reduce the numbers of infections and hospitalizations from that seasonal triple whammy, often referred to as a “tripledemic,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has launched a new campaign to increase both awareness of and education around the vaccines available to protect against the viruses.
Though it’s aiming to reach a broad audience of Americans, the “Risk Less. Do More.” campaign will specifically target higher-risk populations who face increased chances of serious illness and hospitalization if infected with COVID, RSV or flu. Those groups include senior citizens, pregnant people and those living in long-term care facilities or in rural areas, plus Black and Hispanic communities and other racial and ethnic groups who experience structural barriers in their access to healthcare information and services.
The campaign arrives after last fall and winter’s respiratory virus season resulted in 800,000 hospitalizations, according to the HHS.
“Respiratory illness from flu, COVID-19, and RSV viruses usually surge during colder weather and can cause severe disease, hospitalization, and even death,” Jeff Nesbit, the department’s assistant secretary for public affairs, said in the campaign kickoff announcement this week. “The goal of the Risk Less. Do More. campaign is to increase confidence in vaccines that play an important role in preventing severe illness from these viruses and to provide the information that the American people need to make the decision to get vaccinated this fall and winter."
The campaign’s research-based messages will go out via paid ads and media coverage spanning a variety of mediums, including TV, radio, print, social, digital and out-of-home.
Many of the recent ads shared on the campaign’s website focus on RSV, including a 30-second spot detailing the conditions that can put older people at a particularly high risk for serious illness from an RSV infection, along with static ads encouraging pregnant people to ask their doctors about the maternal RSV vaccine to “give your baby a leg up before they take their first steps.”
Another campaign video, meanwhile, explains why staying up to date on COVID vaccines remains important, with information about how the new shots coming this fall will target the newest variants of the virus.
The HHS will also tailor some of the campaign’s messaging and resources to healthcare providers, with a goal of encouraging proactive conversations between patients and doctors about respiratory virus vaccines. For example, several of the doctor-focused campaign ads featured on the Risk Less. Do More. site include the tagline, “When you bring up RSV, you can bring down its risks.”
In addition to the direct advertising, the HHS plans to team up with health departments and other partner organizations at the local, state and national levels to further increase the reach of its information about available vaccines. The campaign will provide those organizations with fact sheets, posters, flyers and social media messages, among other materials, to get the word out.
Those partnerships are designed to “to amplify and extend the reach of the campaign,” which, as a whole, represents “a crucial element of a multi-layered response to encourage people to get vaccinated so they can keep doing more of what they love,” as May Malik, senior adviser for public education campaigns at the HHS, said in the announcement.
The campaign follows another vaccine push that the HHS led amid the peak of the COVID pandemic, beginning in the spring of 2021. The “We Can Do This” campaign was designed to educate Americans about the safety and efficacy of the COVID vaccines, and HHS has since estimated that it ultimately encouraged more than 22 million people to complete their initial vaccine series and, in doing so, saved nearly $732 billion by reducing severe illness and its associated costs.