New Haven Mental Health Outreach for MotherS (MOMS) Partnership

Challenge

Symphonic Strategies was hired by the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven to provide a preliminary assessment of the social marketing strategy and action plan currently being developed by the New Haven Mental health Outreach for MotherS (MOMS) Partnership.

Context

Through in-depth telephone interviews with members of the MOMS Partnership (“Partnership”) and in-person focus groups with mothers from local communities in and around New Haven, our assignment was to assess both the strengths and weaknesses of the current campaign. We agreed to present our findings, along with a set of recommendations at the conclusion of the engagement to the Partnership’s Guiding Team.

We conducted an extensive review of social marketing efforts and full-blown social movement campaigns that offered practical lessons for the Partnership. In total, we reviewed nearly twenty-four (24) campaigns from around the world, eventually settling on six campaigns that we believe offer the most insight for the Partnership. We then took the insights from that research and developed an interview framework that we used in conversations with ten representatives from the Partnership. The individuals we interviewed represented leading practitioners from government, academia, and the non-profit sectors. Our interviews included individuals from the following organizations: All Our Kin, DeBeers, New Haven Child and Maternal Health, The Diaper Bank, Yale University, and the New Haven Housing Authority.

In addition to our in-depth interviews, we also completed two separate 90-minute focus group sessions in New Haven with roughly 20 mothers selected by the Partnership. The mothers were all low-income, minority residents from housing projects in and around New Haven. We used the findings from our research to design the components and the framework for a comprehensive social marketing campaign. We incorporated our findings into a written assessment that included recommendations for how the Partnership can effectively engage low-income mothers. We presented our recommendations to the Partnership’s Guiding Team.

Results

Through our work with this client, we demonstrated a number of our core business capabilities: (1) an extensive literature review and benchmarking analysis of social marketing campaigns focused on the same target group; (2) facilitated strategic planning sessions with members of the Partnership Guiding Team; (3) in-depth interviews with local practitioners and thought leaders; (4) focus groups with low-income, minority mothers from local neighborhoods around New Haven; and (6) creation of a comprehensive, written assessment of the MOMS Partnership.