Health Communication Flashcards
What is the difference between communication and social media?
Communications:
“The study and use of communication strategies to inform and influence individual and community decisions that enhance health.”
Social Media:
“The application of marketing principles and techniques to program development, implementation, and evaluation to promote healthy behaviors or reduce risky ones.”
What are some things that health communications CAN do?
- Increase audience knowledge, awareness
- Influence perceptions, beliefs, attitudes
- Prompt action
- Demonstrate/illustrate healthy skills
- Reinforce knowledge, attitudes, behavior
- Show benefits of behavior change. Advocate a position on an issue/policy
- Increase demand or support for services
- Refute myths, misconceptions
- Strengthen organizational relationships.
What are some things that health communication CAN’T do?
- Make up for inadequate health care services or access to services
- Produce sustained behavior change without the support of other programs for change
- Be equally effective in addressing all issues or relaying all messages.
What are the parts of health communications?
- Credibility: who is putting this message out?
- Type of Campaign: what is the purpose – to make a change, increase support, or improve knowledge?
- Objective: what is the desired result?
- Target audience: who does this campaign target?
- Message: what is the call to action?
- Medium: how was this campaign disseminated?
- Strategies: what support will this campaign have?
- Effectiveness: what happened?
What are the three different types of campaigns?
- Behavior change
- Knowledge/education
- Public will/increase support
What is the difference between knowledge and behavior change?
*KNOWLEDGE ALONE DOES NOT ALTER BEHAVIOR
Knowledge: With some limited exceptions, people already know what they should be doing
Simply telling them what to do rarely creates change
Behavior change: Behavior is shaped by factors such as:
available range of choices
social reinforcement and approval (norms)
rules (laws and policies)
ease/difficulty (benefits and barriers)
cost (economic and otherwise)
Define the objective part os health communications
What is your desired result?
Closely linked to the type of campaign you choose
Change behavior?
Beliefs? Or perceptions of how common the action is?
Give essential knowledge? Change misconceptions?
What theoretical framework will you be using?
Stage of behavior change (e.g. pre-contemplation, contemplation, action, maintenance)
Fear based campaigns
Define fear based campaigns
Mixed research on their effectiveness to get people to change behaviors. The decisions to use them are often based on a balance of: Effectiveness Uncertainty Stigma Marginalization Emotional burden Justice Community participation Scientific credibility
Define target audience?
Who are you trying to reach?
Divide the potential target into “segments”
Demographic groups
Target theoretically meaningful segments of the audience
When do you have narrow or broad targets/
Trade-off:
Narrow target groups, can message more effectively
Broad target groups, (often) more reach
Compromise – start off broadly with common message points, then design special messages/ channels for populations who need further communication
Define messages
What is the action you want the target audience to take?
The call to action should be clear
There should be only one call to action
The message must match your target group:
Greater exposure is associated with greater behavior change
Pay attention to intensity of messages – frequency of exposure
Use multiple channels & formats, especially novel ones
Where will you place messages
Physical geographic space
Time of the day
Define medium
“The medium is the message”- Marshall McLuhan
-The message must match your target group:
Tailored / individualized (more effective than non-tailored)
News/ PR (less expensive; need news hook)
Advertising (free often aired at poor times)
Entertainment (may reduce counter arguing)
Define strategies
What support will you give your campaign? Press release Earned media Paid media Ads Marketing Community organizing Make it “viral”
Define effectiveness
Key questions:
What does success look like for your campaign?
How many people did it reach?
How many people have taken action?
