Paul McGee at the American Cancer Society sent me this link:
Paul described it as "a new ad from the ACS on access to health care. Clearly an effort to bring this important message to a younger audience."
(I will have to ask my two sons, ages 23 and 17, if this works for them. I can't judge.)
I e-mailed him back and asked him how long the ACS had been on YouTube, because I was curious about that.
He said they started using YouTube more than a year ago, and added, "We use it to post everything from educational videos to news clips to event promotion videos."
He said that the national home office got their own TV channel about a year ago. It's used to run public service announcements and educational videos.
The rationale?: "Bold new world of new media. Can't just rely on newspapers, radio, and TV anymore. Need to go to where the people are if we're going to get our messages out about early detection, prevention, and access to care. You probably know that more than anyone."
I told Paul, and I'll repeat it here, that I never had much use for the American Cancer Society (except to use its annual diagnosis and death figures for the various types of cancer when I wrote Web copy for the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance)--I thought it was a stodgy organization that didn't have much to offer me.
Then the ACS jumped into the fray over the uninsured (the millions of Americans--47 million?--who don't have health insurance), and I became a fan.
Here's the link to a post I wrote last fall, quoting from an editorial in The New York Times:
And an excerpt:
The ACS "decided to devote its entire advertising budget this year to the problem of inadequate health coverage after reaching a stark and sobering conclusion. It has no hope of meeting its goal of reducing cancer death rates by 50 percent, and incidence rates by 25 percent, from 1990 to 2015 unless cancer patients gain quicker access to screening and treatment."
That sound you hear is me clapping.
@ Jeanne Sather 2008.
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