The Community Guide

Health communication is defined as the study and use of communication strategies to inform and influence individual and community decisions that enhance health (NCI 2001).

• The scope of health communication includes disease prevention, health promotion, health care policy, and the business of health care as well as enhancement of the quality of life and health of individuals within the community.
• Health communication considers a variety of channels to deliver its targeted or tailored messages to specific segments among varied audiences, including individuals, communities, health professionals, special groups, and policy makers.

Social marketing is the use of strategic marketing practices “…to influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience.” (Kotler & Andreasen, 2003)

• Social marketing is customer centered and focuses on three major decisions: segmentation, targeting and positioning. Guided by these decisions, the “marketing mix” (or 4 Ps of marketing: place, price, product & promotion) is developed to produce the desired responses in the target markets.
• Eight established benchmark criteria have been widely accepted as essential components of social marketing efforts: consumer orientation, insight, behavioral objectives, segmentation, exchange, competition, marketing mix, and theory.

• Health communication campaigns that include mass media & health-related product distribution based on strong evidence of effectiveness for producing intended behavior changes

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and this public health challenge.

Health Communication and Health Information Technology

• Objective 1: (Developmental) Improve the health literacy of the population
• Objective 2: Increase the proportion of persons who report that their health care providers have satisfactory communication skills
• Objective 3: Increase the proportion of persons who report that their health care providers always involved them in decisions about their health care as much as they wanted
• Objective 4: (Developmental) Increase the proportion of patients whose doctor recommends personalized health information resources to help them manage their health
• Objective 5: Increase the proportion of persons who use electronic personal health management tools
• Objective 6: Increase individuals’ access to the Internet
• Objective 7:   Increase the proportion of adults who report having friends or family members whom they talk with about their health
• Objective 8: Increase the proportion of quality, health-related websites
• Objective 9: Increase the proportion of online health information seekers who report easily accessing health information
• Objective 10:   Increase the proportion of medical practices that use electronic health records
• Objective 11: (Developmental) Increase the proportion of meaningful users of health information technology (HIT)
• Objective 12: (Developmental) Increase the proportion of crisis and emergency risk messages intended to protect the public’s health that demonstrate the use of best practices
• Objective 13: (Developmental) Increase social marketing in health promotion and disease prevention

Mobilize   Assess   Plan -  Implement  Track

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