Heat Relief
by Elizabeth Curran
title
Heat Relief
agency
In-House Office of Communications
client
Maricopa County
Submission by
Elizabeth Curran
Project Lead
Elizabeth Curran / Web and Creative Services Manager
Contributors
Diane Veres, Regional President, Midwest & Southwest of Clear Channel Outdoor Fields Moseley, Director of Communications for Maricopa County Jason Berry, Deputy Director of Communications for Maricopa County Austin Guerrero, Communications Multimedia Designer Sonia Singh, Director of Communications for Public Health Angela Moreth, Content Developer for Public Health
Purpose & Point in Time
In Maricopa County alone, 645 heat-associated deaths were reported in 2023. Maricopa County Public Health partnered with a number of cities, 2-1-1, and large organizations to increase heat relief resources and sites to provide most vulnerable populations with access to air conditioning, water, and other vital resources.
In preparation for another year of record-breaking heat, Maricopa County communications teams collaborated with Maricopa Association of Governments Heat Relief Network on a campaign providing awareness around the availability of these life-saving resources. While this was a collaborative effort, Maricopa County’s in-house designer spearheaded the creative.
The campaign expanded after launch, with the City of Phoenix joining as a partner and Clear Channel Outdoor donating over 100 billboard spaces across South-Central Arizona.
Goal
To increase awareness of heat relief resources among vulnerable populations and facilitate access to these services.
Strategy:
Leverage Heat Relief Network logo: Enhance familiarity and recognition by aligning creative with the logo since it’s used an identifier for heat relief sites.
Create a comprehensive toolkit: Offer a variety of resources in English and Spanish for distribution and sharing.
Prioritize accessibility: Design materials for cross-distribution avoiding use of agency logos to promote wider adoption by partners.
Leverage digital billboard capabilities: Incorporate the temperature gauge reading with the overall message to draw attention to the extreme temps and resource availability.
Results
Early findings show campaign success with an estimated 8M views per month thanks to the generous donation of billboard space. This also led to news coverage by multiple outlets. The toolkit launch itself made news, while our Maricopa.Gov/Heat and Maricopa.Gov/HeatToolkit landing pages saw over 11K pageviews with an average engagement rate of 73%. This is 10% above the average rate. Most importantly, preliminary results are indicating a summer with fewer heat-related deaths.
Elizabeth Curran
I'm an Arizona native who loves solving complex problems through design and technology. As an empath, I prioritize the human experience. At Maricopa County, I’ve been fortunate enough to work on projects that help people stay safe, find pets, and get through tough times. While I am extremely proud of the County website redesign and the work I did to steer the design, launch, and roll out of the new Maricopa County brand - I am most proud of the work I did during the pandemic. During that unprecedented time, I collaborated with our GIS team to create a web page so parents and schools could visualize the level of spread in their area. I also spearheaded the design team creating cohesive materials to help Public Health spread awareness on updates, tips to stay healthy, and vaccines - all while teaching my child to type so she could do schoolwork during the lockdown.