The Public Health Messaging Challenge

Based within the University of Lincoln, the Student Life team aims to create a range of accessible media that both promotes campus-wide initiatives and provides a resource to students looking for additional support.

Outside of the teaching environment, Student Life provides a full wrap-around support service for students. The Graduate Skills Builder project team was asked to investigate how effective public health messaging could be specifically tailored to better target a student audience. 

To answer this question, the student project team created and disseminated a survey to students asking about how they best engage with material online and which social media platforms they use the most. Utilizing the results from this survey, the group produced a detailed report highlighting key social media trends and developed suggestions for areas that Student Life could strengthen their practice. The students were able to draw comparisons with the work of other institutions and allow this to inform the suggestions for Student Life. 

The students on this project were able to work on a real-life pressing issue by feeding into the essential work the Student Life team produced. Specifically, by providing suggestions to improve the distribution of informative COVID-19 content.