The Back the Black Committee was selected as the winner of the Iowa Public Health Association’s Partner of the Year. The Iowa Public Health Association is a membership-based organization comprised of advocates and allies of public health from across the state. The Back the Black committee was a focus group created by Iowa Healthiest State Initiative to inform a marketing campaign to make mental health more accessible to Black Iowans.

Iowa Healthiest State already has an existing initiative giving Iowans resources for mental health called Make It OK, but they were missing certain demographics and needed to find new solutions for reaching more Iowans. The Back the Black focus group worked together to brainstorm and conceptualize how a marketing campaign about mental health would be most effectively created for Iowans in the Black community.

This group was fun to be a part of! Everyone had real passion for the work they were doing, and we were all personally invested in making this project as successful as possible. With the work that the committee put together, Studio Delta Designs was able to take that information and create the Back the Black campaign for Iowa Healthiest State.

See more on this campaign on Iowa Healthiest State Initiative’s website here!