Constituency Relations in Campaign Implementation

It can be extremely helpful to to establish constituency relations in program (or campaign) implementation.  Constituency relations in health promotion refers to, "the process of convening, exchanging information and establishing and maintaining strategic relationships with key stakeholders and organizations with the intent of identifying common goals that can contribute to the outcomes of specific communication program or health-related mission" (Shiavo, n.d).

Just from the definition can you identify reasons why this type of relationship would be beneficial!? These relationships can help pool resources and advance health and social goals by strengthening the credibility and relevance of a social issue.  While there are several benefits in these types of relationships, establishing a working partnership may be more challenging than you or your organization originally intended. According to Shiavo, the following three components can assist in a successful partnership:

• Identify someone within your organization to be a champion in outreach and relations
• Emphasize teamwork, listening, and negation, as well as balancing needs and sharing credit with success with other organizations
• Train staff members
• Share results with other departments or organizations

Additionally, to ensure a successful partnership, it is imperative to ensure proper communication in order to establish organizational goals and objectives as well as who is responsible for what task with in each organization.  This will make sure everyone is on the same side of the cliff... 

Schiavo, R. Health communication.
http://www.teamworkandleadership.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/effective-communication-at-work.jpg 

The Digital Age

Health care and public health social marketing isn't quite as simple as it once was.  While this era presents more complexity, it also presents SO many more options to reach the target audience!

Hang on... before you read any further, I want you to count how many digital means you can think of to spread health messages... How many did you come up with? 5? 10? 15? 20!?

Yea, there's are a lot!  Because of this, I'm not going to go into detail about all of them or even list them all.  That being said, I listed a few areas I find particularly interesting or important.

Social media as a tool for health communications:

• Youtube: This health advertisement links directly to youtube!  You can also use Youtube to share longer videos that go in-depth about a health topic.

• Blog (like this one!)
• Twitter
• Facebook
• eCards (do people still use these?)
• Flickr
• Buttons and Badges
  
• Podcasts 
• Widgets 

Those are only a few out of the great many social media options. If you're interested in social media as a means of health communication I would highly recommend checking out the CDC's Health Communicator's Social Media Toolkit!

mHealth

mHealth= mobile health.  This type of service is also becoming increasingly popular and can be particularly advantageous to rural populations or low-income countries who would normally have limited access to a physicians or health messaging.  mHealth can be used for health education and awareness, disease surveillance, helplines, diagnostic and treatment support (including telemedicine, where a patient never has to be seen in person by a real doctor).  Of course, ethically, this type of medicine can present many challenges, most notably, patient confidentiality.

Serious Gaming

Serious gaming is the use of games to deliver a serious message (as the name suggests).  Pretty cool stuff, although not simple or cheap to design and implement. Here's a link with several examples: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/games.html.  In addition to these games that teach you about a certain topic, there are other computerized games that use 3D body images as an interactive tool to explain how lifestyle behaviors can affect overall health.  Lastly, some digitalized serious games get the participant out and about by using an application on your mobile device, this promotes physical activity and community engagement. 

Ethical Concerns:  

Confidentiality and ensuring identity is a concern with many areas of digital medicine or heath communications.  For example, if one wants to use mobil devices as an option for medical diagnostic and/or treatment there has to be a mechanism in place to confirm both the provider and patients' identity.  This is partly just to make sure these individuals are who they say they are, however, it is also important in ensuring confidentiality.  If a patient is in care for HIV, the provider must insure their diagnosis does not become known to family members who also have access to the mobil device. 

Cultural Relevancy in Health Promotion

Cultural relevancy is a big issue in health promotion!  Since this class started in January, we have read several pieces on cultural relevancy.  Ultimately, this topic incorporates both considerations about the target audience as well as framing the message in a way that is culturally acceptable.

Some concepts to keep in mind when developing a culturally relevant campaign are:

• The knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, values, norms, customs, traditions, artifacts mores, folkways of the campaign's target audiences
• Subcultures
• Language
• Cultural sensitivity 
• Cultural identity
• Lifestyle
• Community
• Identity affiliation
• Cultural segmentation
• Cross-Cultural Communication
• Cultural differences in interpersonal communication
• Acculturation 

As you can see in this health promotion campaign, several of the afore mentioned concepts were addressed.  The campaign is in the local language, featuring culturally appropriate clothing and housing structure.  Additionally, it is addressing knowledge, attitudes, believes, and norms by encouraging women to take vitamins even after the baby has been born. 

Another way several countries have utilized health education and promotion is through entertainment.  This is called Educational Entertainment or EE.  Two prime examples of EE are Soul Buddyz and Soul City in South Africa and The Archers in the UK.  

The archers was the first ever and longest running EE, originating in 1951 on the radio through BBC.  This program began as a soap opera that delivered educational message for agriculture.  Over the years, several issues have been covered and the current action line is on stopping domestic violence. 

Soul Buddyz and Soul City is a multi-media campaign utilizing radio, TV, comic books, workbooks, etc. and is broad cast in 9 languages.  This EE has also tackled a variety of health and social issues over the years with the highest ranking episode on domestic violence.  In this episode, community members banged pots and pans together when they knew domestic violence had occurred in a fellow community members home.  Not only was this the highest ranking episode, the technique of banging pots and pans together to stop domestic violence was later used in a real community!  Talk about impact! 

The Archers - BBC Radio 4. (2016). BBC. Retrieved 10 April 2016, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qpgr

Soul Buddyz Television Series - Tomorrow is ours — The Soul City Institute for Health & Development Communication. (2016). Soulcity.org.za. Retrieved 10 April 2016, from http://www.soulcity.org.za/projects/soul-buddyz

Fear Tactics in Health Promotion

While fear appeal in health promotion tends to be a widely debated concept... Does it work?  Does it not work?...  There are a few guiding principles that should be used along with this tactic. The following video sums this research and related guidelines up pretty well. 

And here are two examples where health promotion campaigns use fear as a prevention technique.  What do you think?

(2016). 2.bp.blogspot.com. Retrieved 10 April 2016, from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMJAfqhDXh6MGAsHKu0sSB7nqe5B9unHY62K6IS_w1o9Qf-CbTzSCjJvcy3Xmg44sZ1WP5NHNdQnY9sFpYAku7GAX_Rqd-vcOIZCR_h0DNZmkj2BSBNHJK2FjKK16Csh8Mbeike_Zq_rU/s640/meth_lipstick.jpg

Birkett, A. (2016). Fear and Greed: What Drives Human Behavior?. ConversionXL. Retrieved 10 April 2016, from http://conversionxl.com/fear-and-greed/

Do Scare Tactics Work? A Meta-Analytic Test of Fear Appeal Theories - Association for Psychological Science. (2013). Psychologicalscience.org. Retrieved 10 April 2016, from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/video/do-scare-tactics-work-a-meta-analytic-test-of-fear-appeal-theories.html