the basics - World Health Communication Associates

· understanding of bias and levels of evidence· statistics and probabilities, and· critical thinking skillsRatzan (2001) points out that in designing effective and understandablehealth communications it is important that the context and content reflect therealities of people’s everyday lives and communication practices.It is also essential to include the viewpoints and experiences of the targetpopulation in the design, implementation and evaluation of all interventions (IOM2004).Furthermore, health information that is developed from an interdisciplinaryapproach, which includes a variety of different health, education, social and culturalperspectives, is more likely to be effective, adopted and successfully diffused withinindividual communities (Allen 2001; Manderson 1999; Watters 2003).Social MarketingSocial marketing uses marketing principles alongside socio-psychological theoriesto develop behaviour change programmes. It takes the planning variables frommarketing (product, price, promotion and place—see Box 8 below) and reinterpretsthem for health issues. It seeks to address and adjust where needed the psychological,social and economic contexts that surround behaviour choices (NSMC 2007a; Hastings2007 6 ). Social marketing approaches focus on the needs of well-defined consumergroups—a shortcoming of ‘traditional’ public health communication. A key principleis that if you try to reach everybody, you reach nobody.6Gerard Hastings’ book provides a series of instructive case studies, to which the reader isreferred.48SECTION 4: WHAT CAN WE DO TO STRENGTHEN HEALTH LITERACY?