Founded in 1997, Hamaspik of Rockland County in New York State is a Medicaid-sponsored non-profit healthcare service agency that serves people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. As one of various programs offered in 2021, their Comfort Health provided care management to approximately 400 families with qualifying children and young adults up to 21 years old.

Care management can be very valuable for families. For example, the program helps advocate for children at school, find the right healthcare specialists, provide transportation to medical appointments, and even help families apply for financial assistance grants.

In 2021 Hamaspik sought to increase awareness and secure more program participation from additional Medicaid-eligible families.

Despite exponential growth since its inception, Hamaspik recognized that the Hispanic community of Westchester County was largely underserved. In addition, the program only had one Spanish-speaking staff, making reaching out to get the word for the program difficult.

The client tasked us to educate and attract more Hispanic families to the program. Based on the information we gathered from the program’s Spanish-speaking social worker, we determined that we had to target Spanish-speaking mothers and grandmothers between the ages of 18-60 who live or work in the county.

We developed a community relations and digital marketing program to reach stakeholders close to the Hispanic community. These stakeholders included churches, schools, health, youth, and other non-profit organizations. We developed bilingual PowerPoint presentations and marketing materials that the client and us distributed in the community. We also developed specific messages that we tailored to reach each of these community targets. For example, we targeted school counselors, psychologists, and community outreach workers at schools.

As a result of our efforts, we secured (at no cost) opportunities to engage with the community face-to-face at various community events. These included: At church after a Spanish-language mass with large attendance, outside of local libraries, and at health fairs.

The program we implemented also included a digital component. We conducted outreach to local community groups created on FB, developing advertising via Facebook/Instagram and a microsite that served as a landing page for those ads. The campaign successfully grew awareness for the program, engaging families and securing program sign-ups.