HealthLink gets media savvy with billboards

SWAMPSCOTT – The most active environmental and public health advocacy group on the North Shore is looking to traditional, low-tech media to spread its message about being kind to Mother Earth.Swampscott-based HealthLink has launched a billboard campaign and is gearing up for an information blitz aboard Blue Line subway trains.The message spelled out on its billboards in Wyoma Square in Lynn and along Route 1A in Revere is simple and straightforward: Signs of a Changing Planet: Embrace it with HealthLink.org.Certainly an advertisement for themselves, HealthLink members hope the billboards will steer viewers to their Web site and perhaps join their efforts toward environmental protection and public health. A wind turbine, solar panels and ocean waterpower are depicted on the billboard.Additional billboards will soon be erected on Route 1 in Salisbury, at the intersection of Cabot and Rantoul streets in Beverly, and on Route 1 south in Topsfield where plenty of visitors are expected to see it as they head for the Topsfield Fair this fall.Martha Dansdill, executive director of HealthLink, said renting the billboard space and creating the bumper stickers that will be handed out on the subway trains cost $15,000, the funds stemming from a grant the organization received from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, a quasi-public agency that provides financial and technical assistance for renewable energy projects.Support for the media outreach is clearly evident on the HealthLink Web site, where North Shore environmentalist Lori Ehrlich describes the billboards as “one relatively small attempt to counter the well-funded and self-interested advertising campaigns of the fossil fuel industry that seek to keep us addicted to a dangerous way of generating energy.”HealthLink encourages people to seek alternative energy sources that don’t harm the planet, said Dansdill, citing destructive strip mining, air and water pollution, and problems caused by waste disposal.Jane Bright of HealthLink said raising awareness is key.”After living with the effects of burning coal and oil for power, including numerous health problems, importing oil from hostile countries and global warming, it’s absolutely clear the only intelligent option going forward is renewable energy,” she said. “Wind, solar and ocean power are real. They are viable and the cost, both in terms of our well being and our pocketbooks, is much lower than are outdated and harmful fossil fuel sources of yesterday.”Lynn Nadeau of Marblehead, one of the founders of 10-year-old HealthLink, said it’s exciting to see North Shore communities taking action to prevent ecological disaster by forming committees and pressuring political leaders. The result has been a honing of long-range vision on energy use and the adoption of varied conservation measures.The installation of geothermal heat in the Swampscott Town Hall has been cited as a prime example of this new thinking.”Harnessing the power of wind, sun, earth and water makes sense,” said Nadeau, noting that HealthLink supporters will be at the Wonderland Station subway stop on Route 1A in Revere on Aug. 27 to distribute bumper stickers.The billboards and bumper stickers aren’t HealthLink’s first foray into tapping media power. The organization has long protested Salem Harbor Station, the coal- and oil-burning electricity plant. The message in that case, emblazed on a bumper sticker that depicted a belching smokestack, was again deceptively simple. It read: I’d Rather Be Breathing.HealthLink also intends to distribute information cards to subway riders.As Nadeau pointed out, unlike a billboard or bumper sticker, “You can put more on a subway card.”