EPH 607 - Interdisciplinary Health Communications

This guide was developed for use in EPH 607 - Interdisciplinary Health Communications. It includes a number of databases and other resources that may help you with your assignments.
To reach us directly for assistance, our contact information is listed below.

Here are the slides from the Social Marketing As A Health Communication Strategy presentation.

Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM)

• is the conscientious, explicit, judicious and reasonable use of modern, best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. EBM integrates clinical experience and patient values with the best available research information. (David Sackett, 1997)

Evidence-Based Public Health 

• is defined as the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of the current best evidence in making decisions about the care of communities and populations in the domain of health protection, disease prevention, health maintenance and improvement (health promotion).  It is the process of systematically finding, appraising, and using contemporaneous research findings as the basis for decisions in public health."  (M. Jenicek (1997)

Visit the EndNote Subject Guide for more resources and assistance with EndNote.

Download PDFs of how to install and use EndNote Citation Management software:

• Download Instructions from UMIT
• EndNote Tutorial

Gateway to Health Gateway to Health Communication & Social Marketing Practice

The CDC’s Health Communication Basics Website can help you design and evaluate your campaigns and communication projects to achieve the maximum success.

What do we mean by health communication, social marketing, and health marketing?

Health communication and social marketing may have some differences, but they share a common goal:

Creating social change by changing people’s attitudes, external structures, and/or modify or eliminate certain behaviors.

A person in social marketing or health communications will create and use products, program or interventions as means to the same end:

To promote health changes in individuals and communities, using strategies and tactics based on science and consumer research. 

You may also hear the term “Health Marketing.” In this context, health marketing is a blending of multiple disciplines: 

• The theoretical underpinnings of social marketing with 
• The outreach communication strategies found in health communications.

Health Communication
For more than a decade, CDC and the National Cancer Institute have defined health communication as:
 
Health Marketing 

“Creating, communicating, and delivering health information and interventions using customer-centered and science-based strategies to protect and promote the health of diverse populations” 
(CDC, 2005)

Social Marketing 

“Social marketing is the use of marketing principles to influence human behavior in order to improve health or benefit society.”

Social marketing is about:

• Identifying the specific target audience segment(s), 
• Describing the benefits offered
• Creating interventions that will influence or support the desired behavior change.

Health marketing and communication is an emerging field that draws from traditional marketing theories and principles.

Marketing mix is a term used to describe the integration of four fundamental marketing elements. Remember the ‘four Ps’:

How To Create an Effective Health Campaign: CDCynergy Model

Planning an effective health communication or social marketing campaign takes careful thought and knowledge of the problem to be addressed. 

The CDCynergy model can help you analyze, develop, and implement an effective social marketing or health communication plan. 

Describe The Problem
It should clarify what the public health problem is, who is affected, and what you propose to do to address it. 

• Characteristics & attitudes 
• Beliefs & values 
• Behaviors & determinants 
• Benefits and barriers to behavior change 

• was implemented as you intended (process measures)
• whether changes took place (outcome measures)

Program Evaluation

Effective program evaluation is a systematic way to improve and account for public health actions by involving procedures that are useful, feasible, ethical, and accurate. 

Broad Areas for Evaluation:

• Identify program elements to monitor
• Select the key evaluation questions and engage stakeholders
• Determine how the information will be gathered
• Develop a data analysis-timetable and budget

For more information, go to the Evaluation page within CDCynergy

A look at what CDC and other health communication and social marketing professionals have done to reach their target audiences.

Training, Tools & Templates For Creating Health Campaigns 
There are tools and templates available from the CDC that make preparing a social marketing or health communication plan much easier for you.

 CDCynergy "Lite“: The tool takes you step-by-step through the process, giving you instructions on "What It Is" and "How It Is Done" with tools and templates for each step. 

CDC Training,Tools & Templates 

Social Media at CDC

CDC Social Media Tools

CDC’s Guide to Writing for Social Media

Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication

Health Communication Playbook
Key communication materials for consumers & professionals.



National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing, and Media
Hosted by the The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Public Health Information Coalition (NPHIC), and the Society for Health Communication in Atlanta, Georgia.

Past Conferences Info

• 2022 NCHCMM Conference 
• 2021 NCHCMM Conference

 

WHO Principles for Effective Communications

This framework supports the broad range of communication activities occurring across all parts and levels of WHO. There are som similarities to the CDCynergy Model, in terms of the health marketing aspects, but are adapted for the global reach of the WHO.


It is organized according to six principles to ensure WHO communications are:

• Accessible to decisions-makers
• Actionable by decisions-makers
• Credible and trusted as perceived by decisions-makers
• Relevant to decisions-makers
• Timely to enable decision-making
• Understandable to decision-makers

WHO Strategic Framework for Effective Communications

This Framework describes a strategic approach for effectively communicating WHO information, advice and guidance across a broad range of health issues: from chronic diseases to emerging and novel risks.
 

National Public Health Information Coalition (NPHIC): 
The National Public Health Information Coalition (NPHIC) is the premier network of public health communicators in the United States and U.S. territories. 

NPHIC is an independent organization of professionals sought after to improve America's health through public health communications. NPHIC senior public health information officers:

• Participate with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public and private agencies to promote health and prevent disease.
• Identify methods to improve communications among members.
• Communicate with and through the news media to promote greater understanding and awareness of public health issues.

Society for Health Communication:
The Society for Health Communication is a member-driven organization bringing together health communication professionals, students, and scholars from the diverse areas of teaching, research and practice.

Health Communication: Its History And Future (PDF)

CreativeCommons

CC Search is a tool that allows openly licensed and public domain works to be discovered and used by everyone.

CC Search searches across more than 300 million images from open APIs and the Common Crawl dataset. It goes beyond simple search to aggregate results across multiple public repositories into a single catalog and facilitates reuse through features like machine-generated tags and one-click attribution.

If you have ever used the old version called MediaMark MRI, you will welcome this new version. It’s a wonderful upgrade but it is NOT intuitive! We strongly recommend watching the training video Insight Platform Introduction.
 
The password is MRISimmons2020.
You will actually see several videos there. The one you want is the second one (center of the top row). Half an hour long but well worth the time!