Orange County’s public health department – the OC Health Care Agency – won’t renew a multi-million dollar mental health advertising contract with the Anaheim Ducks after at least one county supervisor began questioning how effective the efforts are.
County health care leaders have spent $14.5 million on advertising mental health in recent years with the Ducks and the Los Angeles Angels – a strategy that has been questioned since the start.
This month, Health Care Agency Director Veronica Kelley quietly nixed a nearly $3 million advertising contract with the Anaheim Ducks just days after recommending it to county supervisors and telling the team they were set to sail through the process.
In 2022, county supervisors unanimously sent over $8.4 million to the Ducks to advertise their flagship mental health program, a website dubbed OC Navigator.
At the time, some mental health advocates questioned if the contract would generate any real engagement with the website, and Kelley said they’d be watching to make sure it was working.
“We look forward to analyzing data from the proposed metrics once a history is established and context can be provided on the effectiveness of the outreach efforts,” Kelley said in a 2022 email to Voice of OC when asked about the contract.
This isn’t the first time the healthcare agency tried to work with a sports franchise to get the word out about mental health.
The Angels also received a similar contract that ended in 2022 according to county records, netting the team over $4 million.
[Read: OC Spends a Third of Mental Health Outreach Money on Sports Teams: Is It Working?]
In exchange for the money, the Ducks put the OC Navigator branding on their helmets along with a slate of advertising around the Honda Center, including things like callouts during the games and branded player bobbleheads with the OC Navigator web address on them.
Kelley also regularly attended and promoted the program at the games, posting videos and photos from Ducks events over a dozen times to her personal Instagram page in the past year.
State-required conflict of interest disclosure forms filed by Kelley for 2024 don’t show her receiving any free tickets from the team, and county staff said they had no records of HCA staff receiving tickets in response to a public records request from Voice of OC.
While county officials claimed the ads and similar outreach on TV and social media produced over 800 million “impressions,” only 532 people actually clicked through the Ducks’ page to the full OC Navigator website, according to Ian Kemmer, the agency’s head of behavioral health.
That means the county was spending over $16,000 on advertising per click that actually went through to all their mental health resources.
Healthcare agency spokesperson Ellen Guevara noted that it’s impossible to know the number of people who visited the OC Navigator website after seeing the Ducks’ campaign unless they went through that specific link, adding that the goal to increase awareness was accomplished.
“The awareness and branding through this campaign create a level of comfort and trust in the OC Navigator, help reduce mental health stigma, and offer a resource to community members if ever needed,” Guevara wrote.
Kelley proposed extending the contract for another year in a proposal on the board’s April 22 agenda, this time for an annual price tag of nearly $3 million.
“The Contract services considerably increase the total number of people reached who might not otherwise be exposed to these messages and information,” county staff wrote in a report on the April 22 agenda which listed Kelley as the top point of contact.
“Renewal of this Contract will allow HCA to continue this large-scale education and awareness effort to connect with the diverse OC community by leveraging the Anaheim Ducks reach.”
But the proposed contract got pulled off the agenda before the April 22 meeting, and three days later she sent a letter to supervisors and county CEO Michelle Aguirre saying she’d changed her mind on the contract due to new state guidance on spending the money and budget problems.
“This guidance, in combination with the current financial challenges at the county, state, and federal level has led to the decision to move the funding for the Outreach and Community Awareness Campaign … to instead implement a centralized approach for community planning,” Kelley wrote in her letter.
Kelley also noted the planned funding would instead “shift to support HCA staff in Public Health Services and BHS (Behavioral Health Services).”
When asked about the contract cancellation, HCA staff issued a statement with nearly identical language attributed to Ian Kemmer, the agency’s director of behavioral health.
“In response to this directive, and given ongoing fiscal challenges at the county- state, and federal levels- HCA made the decision to redirect funding,” Kemmer wrote. “This shift supports a more centralized and integrated community planning approach within HCA.”
The contract was also facing questions behind closed doors from Supervisor Janet Nguyen’s staff, who reached out to Kelley with questions about the contract ahead of the meeting.
Nguyen questioned whether the contract was really working for residents who aren’t hockey fans in a Monday phone interview.
“You’re only advertising to a very select few individuals who like hockey and the Ducks,” Nguyen said. “The majority of my district probably don’t go to the Ducks … are we reaching out and meeting those goals?”
Supervisor Katrina Foley, who was a proponent of the original contract, said Tuesday that she supported the contract getting canceled since the money was now going to support services directly.
“We have to preserve jobs that’re protecting public health for sure,” Foley said. “I thought they did a very good job. But I think at this point we’re looking at how do we protect our clinics?”
The rest of the OC Board of Supervisors and the Ducks did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.
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