Government agencies often struggle to reach residents—particularly vulnerable or skeptical communities—with messaging that feels relevant and resonant. Traditional "top-down" public service announcements frequently fail to penetrate the digital spaces where residents actually spend their time. To bridge this "trust gap," the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) fundamentally reimagined its communication strategy for its 2025 mandates.
Through a partnership with Neimand Collaborative, AC&M, Avenir Bold, and XOMAD, NCDHHS moved beyond the “top-down” PSAs and ad-hoc influencer campaigns. The Department strategically integrated trusted social media creators into its outreach framework through a permanent, centralized infrastructure: The North Carolina Creator Council of 400+ locally trusted influencers, who represent members from different state regions, professions, and communities. The Creator Council serves as the primary engine for modernizing how critical health information reaches the state residents.
The Objective: To replace one-way government broadcasts with a sustainable ecosystem of familiar, credible, and culturally relevant content. In 2025, the specific objective was to leverage the relational authority of the Creator Council to drive measurable action across four key public health priorities: mental health (988), reproductive care access, respiratory health, and workforce recruitment. By empowering creators to act as trusted community liaisons, NCDHHS aimed to ensure that vital health guidance was not just distributed, but deeply understood and acted upon by North Carolinians whom traditional outreach often misses. This approach transformed the Department’s role from a distant authority into a collaborative partner in the public’s daily digital conversations.
Modernizing public health communications meant establishing a two-way dialogue. Throughout 2025, NCDHHS shifted from ad-hoc, top-down outreach campaigns into a unified, community-led communication model, leveraging the North Carolina Creator Council to build messaging with the community, rather than just for them.
For each public health priority, NCDHHS collaborated with its agency partners and the Creator Council members to shape campaign call-to-action, develop a messaging strategy, and create key resources to share with the target communities. Unlike traditional approaches, creators were never given scripts. Instead, they were empowered to translate technical health guidance into their own unique voices and lived experiences. Specifically:
Central to these campaigns is a dynamic feedback loop facilitated by the Council’s digital infrastructure—a dedicated collaborative space where NC-based creators, NCDHHS, and agency partners engage directly. After posting, creators report back on audience reactions, common questions, and points of confusion with the execution team. These qualitative community insights have helped NCDHHS pivot messages and refine outreach with a level of agility rarely seen in government communications.
Ultimately, this work is unique because the Creator Council is not a one-off campaign, but a permanent, collaborative infrastructure deeply embedded within NCDHHS’s outreach strategy. This model shifts the Department from a traditional broadcast role to an “always on” collaborative partner. By maintaining this standing, co-creation relationship with local voices, NCDHHS can continuously reach residents with timely, culturally resonant information. This transformation ensures that public health guidance is no longer a series of sporadic static directives, but dynamic ongoing community conversations that are consistently shared, understood, and acted on across North Carolina.
The creator-integrated communication initiatives deployed by the NCDHHS demonstrated that, when public health information is delivered by trusted community liaisons, it travels further and with greater resonance. By coordinating 400+ local voices under a single collaborative infrastructure, NCDHHS achieved reach and engagement metrics that far surpassed traditional benchmarks.
KEY RESULTS:
Why it succeeded: The true success lies in the systemic transformation of NCDHHS’s outreach. Rather than "starting from zero" for every crisis, the Department now has a vetted, standing Council of residents ready to mobilize. This model has successfully shifted government outreach from a static broadcast into a dynamic, statewide conversation, establishing a permanent feedback loop that ensures future health messaging is continuously refined based on real-time community needs.
