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Increased Audience by 137%

and engaged more than 86,000 RNs to improve their health through interactive challenges, blogs and social media content

Executive Summary

In 2017, the ANA Enterprise — a platform dedicated to empowering nurses — launched Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation™ (HNHN). HNHN is a national initiative to improve the health of the nation by first improving the health of nurses. ANA Enterprise reached out to Aha Media Group (Aha Media) to develop a steady stream of highly engaging, ready-to-publish material, including original blogs, newsletters, social media posts and interactive challenges.

Through HNHN, more than 86,000 participants have taken steps to improve their health. In the initiative’s second year, the audience grew by 137%, and web traffic increased by 107%.

Stats

YOY Growth and Increased Engagement

Increase from 2017-2018

%

Pageviews

%

Sessions

%

Users

Numbers represent growth from January 2017 – March 2019

Participants

Partner Organizations

Private Facebook Group Members

The Challenge

A health risk appraisal for RNs and nursing students showed that the collective health of nurses was in danger. RNs got less sleep, weighed more and experienced higher stress than a typical American. Plus, job hazards like workplace violence and injuries from working with heavy patients and equipment contributed to poor health.

To improve nurses’ health, ANA created the online initiative Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation™ Grand Challenge (HNHN GC). Aha Media provides ANA with motivating content including blogs, social media posts and health challenges to get — and keep — nurses excited about the initiative. The challenges describe daily, doable, health-minded tasks. Participants receive them via email or text.

Aha Media’s Approach

After reviewing ANA’s Health Risk Appraisal findings, Aha Media developed a content creation strategy. The Aha Media team:

Interview Stakeholders

To understand the unique health and safety issues nurses face, we talk to nursing students, Chief Nursing Officers (CNOs), board-certified nurse coaches (nurses who help other nurses lead balanced lives), and nurses with advanced degrees and specialized research in topics such as bullying, safe patient handling and mobility and optimal staffing practices.

Create an Editorial Calendar

The calendar maps out blog and challenge content for a 3-month period.

Submit Fresh Content Every Month

Aha Media submits the content to ANA’s team, with ample time for editing and stakeholder review.

The Results

More than 86,000 nurses are making their health a priority by using the HNHN GC content. The project has led to:

Increases in nurse engagement

Each blog ends with a call to action to participate in a discussion or join a private Facebook community. Nurses share their struggles, providing HNHN and Aha Media with new topics to cover.

The most popular challenges include the:

Improved social media engagement

The reader-friendly blogs and challenge tasks are highly shareable, creating conversation and connection between participants online and on social media. A private Facebook community for the HNHN GC participants, has more than 3,500 members.

Connection with partner organizations

This initiative allows HNHN to collaborate with other nursing organizations. So far, more than 450 organizations are participating. These partnerships help spread awareness of HNHN, and demonstrate the organizations’ commitment to their nurses.

Lessons Learned

Creating helpful, informative and easy-to-consume content empowers readers to take control of their health and make lasting changes.

Lead change through content: Nurses achieve better health as a direct result of Aha Media’s web content.
Involve the pros: Hiring a professional content firm allows ANA’s lean staff to consistently publish interesting, inviting content.
Be real: Relatable, accessible content leads to more engagement and performs better on social media than the dense publications ANA publishes regularly.
Use unexpected channels: Text-to-join functionality helps busy nurses engage with the content. ANA noticed a significant increase in the challenge participation after enabling the texting tool.
Let response inform content: After discovering that nurses found the challenges most helpful, Aha Media responded by creating more challenge content to keep nurses engaged.