Using marketing strategies to address health and social problems has reached the anti-poverty enterprise in New York City.
Leaders of a mayoral commission charged with working to eradicate poverty in New York City are scaling back wider ambitions to instead focus on helping three distinct populations: young children, young adults and the working poor.
An article in the New York Times looks at the concerns about segmenting people in poverty and focusing resources on priority audiences - as I've noted before, probably the toughest decisions faced by a social marketing program.
Every one on all sides of such debates raise good points. It can be a painful process for all, but positive outcomes are achievable when one balances short-term gains with long-term goals - something that critics of segmentation and prioritization sometimes forget ['There is a tomorrow' and 'Build on success']. Here's the closer from the article that hopefully heralds a positive beginning for these new efforts:
Merryl H. Tisch ... said that she had been “a little taken aback” when her attempts to include the problems of the elderly were rebuffed. Still, she said, she came to see that the commission was not the place to deal with them, and called the focus on youth and the working poor realistic.
“You can’t do everything in one fell swoop,” she said. “You have to do things that the city can afford and that state and federal funding would help subsidize. It’s not a perfect world, but just trying to undertake this is extraordinary.”
technorati tags: Audience_Segmentation, New_York_City, Poverty_Programs, Priority-Setting
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