Health Communication: from theory to practice
Lecture 1: practicalities, theories of planned behavior and explanation assignment.
Lecture 2: persuasive design in health communication.
Lecture 3: STD-prevention campaigns.
Lecture 4: doctor-patient communication in the digital era.
Lecture 5: gamification, unconscious processes.
Lecture 6: health literacy.
, Lecture 1: practicalities, theories of planned behavior, and explanation
assignment.
In the past couple of years, we have seen an increased number of chronic diseases.
Healthy behavior is an important predictor of chronic diseases: moving your body, eating
healthy, not drinking alcohol or smoking… They all help decrease the chances of chronic
diseases.
The WHO has a nine-target plan for 2025. In this plan, they talk about a reduction of
tobacco use, insufficient exercise, and a reduction in salt and alcohol intake. Through
communication, we can influence these factors.
Practicalities and assignment
Lectures will be on Tuesday (13.00 – 15.00) and Thursday (11.00 – 13.00), via Zoom.
They will be recorded.
The assignment
The assignment will link the theory to the practice. It will be about the COVID-19
vaccination intention to individuals with a migration background. Our task is to:
Identify the target behavior;
Choose an appropriate theoretical model to explain the determinants of these
behaviors;
Determine which behavioral determinant is most important to target and describe
a health communication intervention aimed to improve the target behavior
through this determinant.
The deadline is on June 18th, at 17.00. Grades will be available before we start the exam.
Guidelines are:
Give the word count, student name, and student number.
Length is max 1500 words (excluding references).
The assignment can be written in either English or Dutch.
All questions are interrelated (problem behavior determinant message). Make
sure that your answers are connected too!
The exam
The exam will take three hours, on June 24th between 14.00 and 17.00. it is an open
book exam, about lectures 4, 5 and 6.
Theories of planned behavior
Nothing is as practical as a good theory. A lot of behavioral determinants are already
known, both at the individual level (knowledge, attitude, intention) and at the
environmental level (services, funding, policies). There is no need to reinvent the wheel.
When you choose a theory to help you work in health communication, it can help you
identify reasons why people (not) take health-promoting actions. They also explain
behavior, and suggest how to achieve behavior change. They also help you pinpoint
what you need to know, provide insight into how you can shape effective programs, and
identify what should be monitored and measured.
Different kinds of interventions exist:
For intervention planning.
, For explaining or predicting behavior.
For the diffusion of interventions.
A very well-known model is the model of reasoned action. This is a model that assumes
that behavior is most importantly determined by behavioral intentions. Intentions are
predicted by their attitudes towards the behavior, and by the subjective norms. This
model was extended to form a theory of planned behavior.
The I-change model is the theory of behavioral change, which incorporates several
theories and models. This model proposes that a person’s intention is predicted by
attitude, perceived social influences, and self-efficacy beliefs. These are predicted by
predisposing factors (behavioral factors, psychological factors, biological factors and
social-cultural factors), awareness factors (knowledge, cues to action and risk
perception), and information factors (message, channel and source).
An intention to change is actually difficult. To bridge the gap between intention and
behavior, several factors can play a role. These are the individual skills and a formation
of action plan, for example. According to the I-change model, action planning entails
plans before (preparatory) and after (coping) the decision to change. The I-change
model is rather complex, but this makes it complete.
When you want to change your behavior, it is important to specify the behavior as best
as you can. What can help, is the TACT principle:
Target;
Action;
Context;
Time.
Behavior is not always rational. The right equation for public health impact is:
Public health impact = effect * reach
In potential, digital health communication tools have both effect and reach. Most people
in the Netherlands have access to the internet these days, so in theory we can reach a
really large number of people. At the same time, the interactive nature of the internet
offers us opportunities to have effective results. Digital communication entails websites,
blogs, fitness trackers, profiles on Instagram… It is an umbrella term for all these tools.
The mass media communication has a low effect * high reach. It can be used to promote
a healthy lifestyle, but it not very effective usually. So, there is a high reach, but a low
effect. Health counseling is the other way: high effect * low reach. Very few people
contact their health counselor, but when they do, it is really effective.
A specific form of health communication is computer tailoring. This is the idea that you
gather relevant input, and based on that assessment, you provide a person with relevant
feedback messages. This is usually an automatic process. The data is gathered and then
transferred into an online data file. Then the software program provides the person with
feedback messages from a feedback library. This is tailored in individual feedback.
An example of a computer-tailoring practice is MyDrinkAware. This is a web-based
feature where people can insert their drinking behavior and get some feedback on it. We
know that computer-tailoring is an effective behavior change strategy. It has been
shown to increase personal relevance, the information processing, the use and
engagement, and therefore also the behavioral change.
