Localized Health News Releases and Community Newspapers: A Method for Rural Health Promotion.

Newspaper health stories often originate with news releases from health organizations. Tailoring news releases to a particular mass media outlet increases the possibility that the release will result in a published story. This study describes a 2-year effort to promote coverage of health through dissemination of localized health news releases to newspapers. Each newspaper received stories tailored to that community. Localized elements of stories included local headlines and local data. Nearly half of newspapers in our study (48.2%) published at least one of our health news stories, and 541 health news stories were published as a result of the project. We also examined which types of newspapers were most likely to publish health news stories. Newspapers in rural versus suburban and urban areas were more likely to publish health news stories, as were midsized newspapers. In addition, rural newspapers were more likely than urban newspapers to publish stories about aging, specifically arthritis and heart disease. Our findings indicate that tailoring health news releases with local information and targeting releases to align with newspaper audience demographics could increase the quantity and quality of health-promoting information available to rural residents, who experience disparities in health care access and health outcomes.