How to Complete Part 1 of the Social Media Campaign Assignment: Community Engagement and Topic Selection
What the assignment actually asks you to do, how to approach community engagement online and face-to-face, how to document responses, what makes a strong topic choice, and exactly what goes into your submission.
Part 1 of this assignment sounds straightforward — ask five people about public health concerns, pick a topic, and write a brief explanation. But students get stuck in a few predictable places: choosing a topic before they have actually engaged anyone, documenting responses too vaguely to be usable, and writing a narrative that does not connect the community input to the chosen topic. This guide walks through each step so your submission is solid before the due date.
What This Guide Covers
What the Assignment Is Actually Testing
Before you start posting on Instagram or pulling a topic from the example list, it helps to understand what the assignment is designed to measure. This is not a research assignment yet. That comes later. Part 1 is about community needs assessment — a core nursing and public health competency.
Community-Centered Thinking
Your campaign topic should come from actual community input — not from what you personally find interesting or what seemed easy to research. The assignment is testing whether you can identify a health need that originates outside yourself.
Advocacy Communication
Posting a clear, professional prompt on social media and facilitating responses is a communication skill. You are practicing how to invite input from a community without leading the witness or narrowing the conversation too early.
Evidence-Based Topic Justification
Your narrative needs to explain why you chose your topic based on what you heard — not just assert that it is important. That link between community input and topic selection is the core of the submission.
The CDC defines community health assessment as a systematic process that uses quantitative and qualitative data to understand the health of a community and identify priorities for action. Part 1 of your assignment mimics that process at a small scale: gather data from community members (qualitative), identify a pattern in what they say, and use that to prioritise a topic. The skills you practice here are directly used in public health roles — not just in classrooms. See the full framework at cdc.gov/publichealthgateway/cha.
Step 1: How to Engage Your Community
The assignment gives you two options: social media or face-to-face conversations. You need at least five responses. Most students find social media easier to document, faster to collect responses, and more likely to generate variety. But face-to-face works fine if social media is not practical for you.
The biggest mistake students make in this step is deciding they want to do mental health or vaccine hesitancy before they have asked anyone anything, then crafting questions that guide respondents toward confirming their pre-selected topic. Your instructor will notice if every response conveniently aligns perfectly with the topic you submitted. Ask openly. Let the responses shape the direction.
Using Social Media for Engagement
This is the preferred method, and for good reason. A post stays visible, collects responses asynchronously, and gives you a screenshot to submit. Here is how to make it work.
Choose the Right Platform
Use whichever platform you have an active, real network on. Facebook works well if your connections include family and community members across age groups. Instagram works if your network skews younger. Twitter/X or LinkedIn work if you want more professionally oriented responses. The point is to reach actual people who will respond — not to post on a platform you barely use and get zero comments.
Write a Clear, Open Prompt
The assignment gives you a sample prompt you can adapt. Keep it professional, explain why you are asking, and make the question genuinely open. Something like: “Hi everyone — I’m a nursing student working on a public health project and I’d love your input. What health issues in our community do you feel don’t get enough attention? Any topic welcome — big or small.” That is it. No dropdown list of options unless people ask. The fewer constraints you put on respondents, the more authentic the input.
Wait Long Enough for Responses
Post at least 48–72 hours before your documentation deadline, not the night before. Social media engagement drops off fast. A post on Monday gives you until Wednesday to collect comments. If you post Sunday night and responses are thin, you still have time to supplement with face-to-face conversations.
Screenshot the Post and All Responses
Capture the full thread — your original post, the comments, and ideally a timestamp or date visible in the screenshot. You can blur or crop out usernames if you want to protect people’s privacy. The assignment says you may redact names. What matters is that the content of the responses is visible and readable.
The Face-to-Face Approach
If social media is not an option, five face-to-face conversations work. The approach is the same — open question, no steering — but the documentation format is different.
Who to Ask
- Aim for some variety in age, background, or life situation — not five classmates in the same nursing programme who will likely say the same things
- Family members, neighbours, coworkers, people in your faith community, or anyone in your daily life work fine
- You do not need experts — the point is community perspective, not clinical opinion
- You do not need to use their real names in documentation
How to Ask
- Introduce yourself briefly: “I’m a nursing student working on a project about public health.”
- Ask the open question: “What health issues do you think get overlooked — either in our community or in general?”
- Let them answer. Do not prompt with examples unless they are completely stuck — and even then, offer very broad categories, not specific topics
- Take notes immediately after each conversation — not days later
Step 2: Documenting Responses Correctly
This is where students lose marks without realising it. The documentation needs to actually represent what people said, not a polished summary that strips out the individuality of each response.
| Method | What to Submit | Common Documentation Errors |
|---|---|---|
| Social Media | Screenshot of your original post and the comment thread. Usernames may be redacted. All response content must be visible and legible. | Screenshot only shows the post but not the comments. Image is cropped or blurry. Only positive/useful comments are shown — capture the full thread. |
| Face-to-Face | Bullet-point summary for each person, labelled Person 1, Person 2, etc. Include what they said the health issue was and why it mattered to them. | Summary is so brief it says nothing: “Person 1 mentioned mental health.” That is not sufficient. Include their reasoning. “Person 1, a 54-year-old relative, said mental health services in our area are too expensive and too hard to access, especially for people without insurance.” |
What a Solid Person-by-Person Summary Looks Like
Person 1: A 34-year-old neighbour. Brought up housing instability — said several families in our street have been displaced in the past year and that this is making it harder for kids to stay in school and for adults to manage chronic conditions. Felt this was not covered enough in public health messaging.
Person 2: A 62-year-old family member with diabetes. Said access to affordable healthy food is the main issue in our area — the nearest grocery store with fresh produce is a 20-minute drive, and the local convenience stores do not carry it. Connected this directly to diabetes management in her own life.
Pattern: Each entry names a health issue, gives the person’s reasoning in their own words, and is distinct from the others. That is what the assignment is asking for.Step 3: Choosing Your Topic
Once you have your responses, you choose a topic. The topic does not have to be what the majority of people mentioned — but you do need to be able to explain the connection between what you heard and what you chose. If three people mentioned mental health and you go with firearm violence because it interests you, your narrative needs to account for that honestly.
Topic Emerged Repeatedly
Two or more of your respondents mentioned the same issue independently. The convergence makes the topic defensible as a genuine community concern, not just one person’s opinion.
One Response with Specific Local Detail
A single respondent gave a specific, grounded concern tied to your community context — not a generic statement. That specificity can be a strong basis for a focused campaign even without multiple mentions.
Pattern Across Different Issues
Multiple respondents raised different problems that share an underlying driver — e.g., food access, housing instability, transportation — that points toward a social determinant of health as your campaign focus.
Topic You Already Planned to Use
If your choice was made before engagement happened, the assignment’s purpose is undermined. Your narrative will struggle to show authentic connection to community input.
Topic Chosen for Research Convenience
“There’s a lot of literature on this” is not a community need. It is a research convenience. Your topic should come from what people said, not from what is easy to find sources for.
Topic That Cannot Be Addressed on Social Media
Some topics are too sensitive or complex for a social media education campaign. Topics involving individual crisis situations (active suicide risk, trafficking victims) require different intervention strategies. Consider whether your topic translates to a public awareness campaign format.
What Makes a Strong Topic Choice for This Assignment
Not every topic works equally well for a social media campaign. The assignment will continue through multiple parts — you will build an evidence-based campaign around whatever you select here. Choose something that has both community relevance and enough scope to sustain a multi-part project.
Topics That Work Well for This Format
- Mental health stigma and access to services — broad enough for multiple angles, concrete enough for actionable posts
- Vaping and e-cigarette use among teens — clear audience, clear behaviour, clear public health evidence base
- Food access and nutrition in low-income communities — connects to social determinants, local policy, and health outcomes
- Vaccine hesitancy — evidence-based, community-relevant, appropriate for public education campaigns
- Maternal health disparities — strong literature, defined population, advocacy angle
- Diabetes prevention and management — chronic disease with behavioural and systemic components
Topics to Approach Carefully
- Suicide — appropriate as a topic if framed around prevention resources and stigma reduction, but requires careful messaging to avoid harm; follow safe messaging guidelines
- Firearm violence — politically charged; manageable if focused on public health framing rather than policy debate
- Trafficking — critical issue but hard to address meaningfully in a social media campaign format without specialised expertise
- Vaccine injury — check how your programme expects this to be addressed; framing matters significantly
- Very local issues with no evidence base — if your community raised something hyperlocal, make sure published research exists to support your later parts
Writing the Campaign Narrative
Your narrative is a brief written explanation of the topic you chose and why. Brief means a paragraph or two — not an essay. But those two paragraphs need to do specific things.
State the topic in the first sentence. Do not bury it. “Based on community feedback, I selected mental health access and stigma as the focus for my social media campaign” is a clear opening. Readers should not have to infer your topic from context.
Reference the community engagement in at least one sentence. “Three of the five people I spoke with mentioned barriers to mental health services — cost, availability, and stigma came up in different conversations.” This shows the instructor that the topic selection was driven by the process, not chosen arbitrarily.
One or two sentences on the population-level impact. Not just “mental health is important” — something more specific: “Mental illness affects approximately 1 in 5 adults in the US annually, yet barriers to treatment remain significant, particularly in underserved communities.” This sets up the evidence-based framing you will develop in later parts of the project.
The assignment explicitly says your topic can change as you do more research, and that you should notify your faculty if it does. You can acknowledge this in your narrative — it shows you understand the iterative nature of the project. “I anticipate this topic may be refined as I review the evidence base in subsequent steps.”
Submission Checklist Before You Upload
Run through this before you submit. These are the specific deliverables the assignment asks for.
Screenshot or Written Summary of Community Engagement
Social media: a clear screenshot showing your post and the responses. Face-to-face: a bullet-point summary covering all five people, with the health issue they raised and their reasoning.
Check: Are at least five responses represented? Is the content of responses legible and clear? If using social media, is the original post visible alongside the comments?Your Selected Campaign Topic
A clear statement of the topic you have chosen. This can be the opening of your narrative or a standalone sentence before it. It should be specific — not “health” or “community issues” but something like “teen vaping and e-cigarette use” or “food insecurity as a social determinant of health.”
Check: Is the topic specific enough to build a campaign around? Is it feasible for a social media campaign format?Brief Narrative Explaining Your Choice
One to three paragraphs. Names the topic, connects it to community engagement, explains why it matters as a public health issue. This is not a literature review — keep it focused and grounded in what you heard.
Check: Does the narrative reference the community engagement specifically? Is there a clear rationale for choosing this topic over others that came up?The assignment says explicitly that your topic may change as you research further, and that you should notify your faculty if it does. Do not lock yourself into a topic that turns out to have no usable evidence base. It is much easier to email your instructor early and say the topic has shifted than to build a campaign on a foundation that cannot support the later parts of the project.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nursing Assignment Help Get StartedThe Bottom Line for Part 1
This part of the assignment is about process, not perfection. Your instructor wants to see that you actually engaged your community, documented what they said, and made a reasoned choice based on that input. The topic itself matters less than the quality of the engagement and your ability to explain why you chose it.
Post your social media prompt early. Give it time to collect responses. If it stays quiet, supplement with face-to-face conversations. Document each response in enough detail to actually reflect what the person said. Then write a narrative that connects the dots.
Do not overthink the topic selection at this stage. The assignment explicitly says it can change. Choose something that came out of the engagement, that you can build an evidence-based case around, and that makes sense as a public health education campaign. That is all Part 1 requires you to demonstrate.
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