Global health communication
Bella Mody, PhD
School of Journalism and
Mass Communication
CU Boulder
• Jim Foege, former CDC Director:
“This is the golden age of global health…”
• Jim Yong Kim, Dept of Social Medicine,
Harvard Med School:
“10 million die of preventable diseases
annually…”
• Examples of Years of Life Lost (% 2002) to
-communicable diseases
-non-communicable diseases
-injuries (Source: WHO)
Brazil 30/50/20
Peru 43/42/15
India 58/29/13
Zimbabwe 90/7/4
USA 9/75/17
•
How social science researchers in
Communication can help:
1. Interpersonal communication
2. Organizational communication
3. Media campaigns for public health
communication
• Today: focus on public health
communication
• How do we know it can potentially work?
1. Female infanticide in India
2. The decline in “zero-grazing” in Uganda
• Exs of media mixes available
Lit %
F/M
Dly %hh %
Inter
ppr TV
cells/ net/
/000
indv 000
China
90/90 59
89
35
85
Thailand
91/95 20
92
63
110
Uganda
58/77
5
7
17
3
Beyond ministerial/doc campaign design
• The Sesame Street model:
team production, evidence-based
Audience evidence needed at 4 stages:
1. pre-production establishment of specs
what to communicate, how to communicate
2. mid-production message pretesting
3. exposure testing after dissemination
4. impact evaluation
• Interdisciplinary research methods for
pre-production research:
Lit reviews
Experience interviews: practitioners
Unobtrusive observation of population
Open-ended group interviews
In-depth individual interviews
Random sample surveys for prevalence
• Research methods for mid-production
draft message testing
- appeal, comprehension, immediate recall,
credibility, utility, action-ability:
-atomistic or holistic testing
• Impact evaluation: third party outsiders,
experimental and control groups