This month we celebrated Shashi, BTI’s Operations Manager, for 20 years with BTI. It is not every day we are fortunate enough to celebrate such a wonderful milestone, so we pulled out all the stops to make it special. We spent the day celebrating Shashi with treats, kind words, and...
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South Asian Communities Link to Health Information
Posted on april 25, 2023
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, no one was safe from the impact. Whether through the virus itself, the restrictions to our daily life or the social isolation, the challenges that resulted were complex.
With the rise of the second wave, data was released by Peel Region that shed light on one of the most impacted groups in Ontario, Canada – the South Asian community. The majority of this community are new immigrants, and some may face language barriers. Information from the government and local news sources may have been not fully comprehended or trusted by everyone at the community level. There was also a strong stigma along with non-scientific misinformation surrounding the virus, and cases were not being reported due to a fear of losing livelihood or simply a lack of guidance.
There was an opportunity for a conversation to increase awareness and knowledge, support, and guidance in a language the South Asian community could clearly understand. As a community benefit organization that is invested in health outcomes for these groups specifically, BTI client partner Indus Community Services stepped up, and that is how Apna Health was born.
BTI helped develop and launch a new entity ‘Apna Health,’ an organization committed to the South Asian community’s health and wellness. BTI and Indus Community Services worked closely to develop the name, logo and supporting imagery – ensuring the target audience could connect, relate and trust the brand. The goal was simple – provide accessible, culturally specific health information for the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
Once the brand was created and the website was ready – an awareness campaign was needed to drive attention to the key messages. With key messages like “stop the spread”, “help is here”, and “know the truth”, BTI created a multi-language campaign centered around these four pillars to change perceptions in the community.
The campaign was intended to grab the audience’s attention to the messages, delivered in their language, with a strong visual of a person that they could identify with. Campaign elements included newspaper ads, TV ads, radio ads and interviews, OOH, Google and social media ads, email campaigns, and postcards; all driving the audience to a robust website, apnahealth.org. The website was loaded with facts, information and guidance related to COVID-19 in multiple languages; English, Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, and Urdu.
An extension to the campaign was launched after 3 months of the first campaign, targeting the youth in this community. This campaign encouraged young members to become health ambassadors of their own families and share useful information and guidance with their families by using Apna Health resources. Within 3 months of the first campaign launch, the Apna Health website had more than 30K visitors. Digital platforms (Google Display and SEM + Social Media) delivered more than 5.4 million impressions. OOH sites (Billboards + Bus Shelters) in Mississauga and Brampton provided approx. 500,000 daily average circulation for 4 weeks.
Today, the website has evolved from mostly Covid-19 information to general health information. The website is constantly updated with new content in English as well as South Asian languages. The platform provides the South Asian Community with easily accessible resources and support in their languages.
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Apna Health
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, no one was safe from the impact. Whether through the virus itself, the restrictions to our daily life or the social isolation, the challenges that resulted were complex.