Designing Health Messages: Approaches from Communication Theory and Public Health Practice

"Chapter overviews, subheadings, and summaries facilitate a quick reading and review for graduate students and busy professionals in public health, the social sciences, communication, and related health policy-making fields."

--Academic Library Book Review

How do you design an effective health campaign message? Designing Health Messages explores this question from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The authors, all well-known for cutting-edge research in their field, demonstrate the necessity of basing message design decisions on appropriate theories of human behavior and communication effectiveness by synthesizing and integrating knowledge and insights from communication and health behavior change. Part I covers theory-driven approaches and includes content and linguistic considerations, the role of fear in content, and using positive affect. Part II discusses audience-centered strategies and looks at the "America Responds to AIDS" campaign and the Cancer Communication′s "5 a Day for Better Health" program. This comprehensive volume concludes with recent developments and policy and administrative practices for health message design.

A much-needed book, Designing Health Messages is an indispensable resource and an essential aid for professors, students, and professionals in communication, specifically mass communication, and public health.

"This book would make a strong addition to a graduate-level course on health communication. With complementary reading to broaden students′′ knowledge of the core theories and empirical research applied by these authors to message design, this book would enhance students′′ capacity to link health communication theory and practice."

--Health Policy and Planning

Dr. Edward Maibach is a University Professor and Director of Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication (4C). In the Department of Communication, he teaches seminars in climate change communication, strategic communication, and social marketing. His research currently focuses exclusively on how to mobilize populations to adopt behaviors and support public policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help communities adapt to the unavoidable consequences of climate change. Dr. Maibach holds a BA in social psychology from University of California at San Diego (1980), an MPH in health promotion from San Diego State University (1983), and a PhD in communication research from Stanford University (1990). Dr. Maibach previously had the pleasure to serve as Associate Director of the National Cancer Institute, Worldwide Director of Social Marketing at Porter Novelli, and Chairman of the Board for Kidsave International. He has also held academic positions at George Washington University and Emory University. What students may not know about Dr. Maibach is that he helped plan a multi-billion dollar communication campaign for the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the late 1990s.

I emphasize the processes and outcomes associated with communication about health. My recent research focuses on the design of health messages to promote behavioral adaptation in situations where individuals are unable, unwilling, and/or unlikely to avoid situations and practices that put their health at risk. I have applied a behavioral adaptation approach to farmers′ sun protection practices and am currently investigating its utility for involving the lay public in understanding the implications of human genetics research and information for personal well-being. I utilize a community-based approach in the dissemination of behavioral adaptation messages.