[TEXT: Young African Leaders Initiative: Online Training Series]

Hello, my name is Khadidiatou Ndiaye, assistant professor of global health at George Washington University.

[TEXT: Khadidiatou Ndiaye, Assistant Professor of Global Health; Director, the Global Health Communication Program, Milken Institute School of Public Health, The George Washington University]

This is Building a Public Health Communication Campaign.

[TEXT: Effective Communication for Healthy Outcomes: Building a Public Health Communication Campaign]

Imagine that malaria is a leading cause of illness and death in your town but people are not using bed nets, even though they are available. You decide you want to do something about it. A well-designed public health communication campaign can help you. In this lesson, we will go through step-by-step instructions for designing a public health communication campaign, from completing the formative research, implementing the campaign and evaluating it.

As defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health communication involves the study and use of communication strategies to inform and influence individual and community decisions that enhance health. A communication campaign is a strategic effort that involves understanding and respecting local cultures, as well as multichannel integration, participation of relevant stakeholders and increased attention to evaluation. We just don’t throw messages out there and hope they will resonate with the audience.

Communication campaigns are designed using a range of theoretical frameworks to increase their effectiveness. And the best ones work at multiple levels to reinforce messages. They may focus on the individual, family, community or society. It is important to note that even if the campaign you are designing is focused on the individual level, you should consider community and societal influences. If we go back to the example about malaria, consider if there are policies that make it difficult for a family or individual to access the bed nets.

For the sake of clarity, we will divide the campaign into three major stages: formative research, implementation and evaluation.

Formative research allows for a more focused campaign, helps avoid mistakes that could make your campaign ineffective and enhances the quality of your message. Before we think about designing messages, there are several steps to ensure that we have a great understanding of the problem, the audience and the context. To complete your formative research, you will use several data collection techniques, including individual interviews, focus groups, participant observation, surveys and document reviews. You will also consult current and past campaigns on the same topic.

The first step is to understand the scope of the problem. This is where you ask the question: What is really going on? Some of the things to consider at this stage include the health situation — its size, who is affected. Also, consider media access and past, current and planned efforts to address the issue.

A campaign cannot be designed for all audiences. Understand that different audiences possess different characteristics that make them more or less likely to pay attention to, process and be influenced by different messages. Audience analysis allows you to understand and better predict behavior and thus develop messages that appeal to your audience. First, look at the relevant demographic information for the topic. Consider things like age, gender, marital status, income and education to segment the audience. Audiences can also be divided based on their readiness to change. By understanding where the individuals are in their change process, we are able to move them to the next step. For example, campaign messages would be different for someone who’s never used bed nets than someone who has used them once but stopped.

Now it’s time to define your campaign goals and objectives. This is where you have to be careful to avoid one of the errors that novice campaign designers often make. They tend to believe that it’s always a knowledge issue and we just need to inform people and they will change their behaviors. The reality is that sometimes the knowledge is there but it is not enough to induce behavior change. For example, if you see that many families in your community have bed nets, but are not using them, your campaign goals and objectives would be different than if you were working with families who don’t know about bed nets.

Successful, well-designed messages are simple, memorable, easily understood, culturally appropriate and meaningful to the audience. When we are talking about messages, we are not talking about a poster or brochure. We are talking about the key content, the key take-home messages based on the needs identified in the previous steps.

Your message should be written with the seven Cs in mind. Command attention, clarify the message, communicate a benefit, be consistent, create trust, cater to the heart and mind, and include a call to action. You should also be careful to design a respectful and culturally appropriate message. Finally, messages should be pretested with members of the priority audiences.

When determining how to best reach the audience, you should consider both traditional channels like radio, TV and print, as well as new technologies such as SMS messages or online applications. For example, in Ghana the United Against Malaria campaign used SMS to share information about net use. Another example was a campaign called “Malaria the silent killer.” Research had shown that people were fairly apathetic and fatalistic about malaria and were not aware that pregnant women and young children are most at risk. The TV spots, radio and print messages thus depicted the worst-case scenario, warning people that malaria could kill their unborn child or their young children, and the way to prevent this was to sleep under an insecticide-treated mosquito net.

Culturally appropriate channels such as town criers, clinic education sessions for new mothers, community-led arts programs, peer education in marketplaces, and rural community festivals are other examples of channels and tools that should not be overlooked.

It is important to consider the timing of the message delivery and what activities audience members are engaged in at that time. Determine how often they need to see the message. Literacy levels should not be overlooked. A brochure would be useless if your audience members cannot read. Since different channels have different challenges and benefits, a mix of multiple channels is often employed. Finally, you should seek help from creative professionals in developing things like graphics, layouts and storylines.

Once you have completed the first five steps, you are ready to deliver the messages.

Your implementation plan should detail the entire message delivery and monitoring process. In this step, identify your potential partners in implementing the program and the roles they will play. The partners could be policymakers or community organizations. For example, the United Against Malaria campaign brings together football players, community organizations and policymakers. Create a realistic timeline for the campaign and determine who is responsible for each milestone. Develop the budget for the campaign. Create a monitoring plan to see if the campaign messages are delivered as intended. For example, if power outages prevented you from having the bed nets demonstration you wanted to have, it should be noted so that you can adjust and reschedule the activity.

Evaluation will help you determine whether your campaign was effective, whether it achieved its goals, and the efficiency with which it achieved them. As we discussed earlier, you will monitor your campaign activities in real time. Impact evaluation is completed at the end of the campaign, and it focuses on overall results.

Evaluation will allow you to measure the effects, both anticipated and unanticipated, short- and long-term. Your evaluation should address questions such as: How do you expect change to occur? Which measures will capture the scope of the change? What needs to be measured to demonstrate that you are meeting your objectives? Be sure that you are measuring what you need to measure. Collect baseline data before you begin the campaign. At the end of the campaign, you should write an evaluation report that is accessible to your community and partners.

Building a public health communication campaign to address a health threat or concern facing your community is well worth the effort. Done properly and thoughtfully, with support from governmental, nongovernmental, or trained, informed collaborators, a campaign can save lives.

After you have completed all the lessons in this course at YALI.state.gov, you can test your knowledge and earn a YALI Network Certificate.

[TEXT: Produced by the U.S. Department of State]

[TEXT: Test your knowledge
YALI.state.gov]

[TEXT: Photo credits: USAID,
HRSA at U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]