When was the last time you heard a public health official crack a joke?
Look no further than into last week when the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) published a blog on… Wait for it…
That’s right. Oh, you’ve probably heard about it by now anyway, because the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post and countless others picked it up right away. We’re keeping the gruesome fires burning, however, because we’re still in awe.
Those who use social media for good and are able to truly go viral are just plain crackerjack in our book!
I never thought I’d put the CDC in that category, as much as I love them. Let’s face it… educating the world about prevention is like nailing jell-o to a tree (stole that from a plaque about parenting teenagers, but it’s fitting, no?). Add in yawner subjects like rubella stacked up against Lady Gaga in the news and you’re out.
But wait! Cut away to a hip CDC staffer who was tweeting about the nuclear crisis in Japan when someone asked if that could spark a Zombie outbreak (the cause of the epidemic in the 1964 classic horror film “Night of the Living Dead”). Tweets went a bit wild and the CDC folks got wise.
Next thing you know, they post a blog about Zombies with the caveat, “…and hey, maybe you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency.”
And, hey? And HOW!
A typical CDC post gets 1,000 hits but this one got 40,000 by Tuesday and then crashed their server. That must have really perked up the Zombie panic! The server was refreshed and the hits keep coming.
Using pop culture to draw people’s attention to the value of the work they do, and, better yet, to saving lives… pure genius.
Zombie fanatics talk about the affliction as a virus. The CDC would be first on the scene if such a thing could happen. No one really gets that, the fact that CDC investigates and stops the spread of infectious diseases, among so many other great deeds (see the NY Times article summary).
Indeed they are unsung heroes, great warriors in the worldly shadows, protecting us from countless close calls. Why don’t we hear more about it? Because, panic is deadly — much more so than most diseases. So they keep a low profile and snuff out perilous super-villain bugs as we unwittingly sip our morning coffee. That has the unintended consequence of us under-valuing them; so much so that many want to cut funding to this wing of the CDC.
So what better way to help people see they are indispensable? Pop culture.
It’s risky, a bit like Orwell’s War of the Worlds; but the payoff has huge potential.
If we spent as much time and energy on a public health campaign as we do on our general elections, we’d be the healthiest people in history. Imagine endless TV ads and lawn placards saying “Exercise Matters! Get Off Your Duff!” or “Eat More Produce — Cure Cancer!”
Lately it seems there are a lot of attempts at fomenting panic about the end of the world, from literature to Hollywood to religion, that it makes sense to jump on this train in a mirrored wacky kind of way — “can’t beat ’em, join ’em”, or “meet them where they are” messaging really works. If panic ensues, either because the seemingly crazy people were right after all, or because foment spirals into a War of the Worlds madness, the CDC has done a great job helping us prepare. In fact, this may be all it takes to quell the panic that seems to be percolating; and that’s prevention at its best. Tax dollars well spent.
I just love it when health education gets really smart by being whimsy and wacky on the surface, scientific underneath. It’s a spoonful of sugar for the medicine, and a delicate dance done all too little.
Huge kudos to the Feds for breaking away from the stodgy persona with which they are so often sidled.
Let’s hope they can grab us with more.