Benchmark – Health Communication Intervention
Design a health communication intervention for a public health issue affecting your local
community.
Create a 1,000-1,250 plan that includes the following:
Goal: Identify the overall communication intervention goal for your selected public health
issue affecting your local community. This goal should serve as a brief description of the
expected overall health improvement in mortality, morbidity, incidence, prevalence, or
quality of life.
Objectives: Identify the specific social, behavioral, or organizational results supported by
the overall goal that are expected by the intervention. Objectives should be SMART
(Specific, Measurable, Appropriate, Realistic, and Time-Bound).
Situation and Audience Analysis: Provide an overview of the factors that influence the
health issue and the adoption of new behaviors. Be sure to include an audience profile.
Communication Objectives: Describe the changes in knowledge, attitudes, and skills that
lead to social, behavioral, or organizational changes that then support the overall
intervention goal.
Communication Strategies: Describe the audience-specific communication actions to be
taken to meet communication objectives. Articulate how and why you selected the
communication strategies for your different audiences and sectors.
Action Plan: This should include a description of the communication messages, materials,
activities, and channels that will be used. Describe key groups and stakeholders who will be
involved and their roles and responsibilities. Address any potential barriers to
implementation. Include a timeline for the implementation.
Budget: Prepare a line item budget for the resources needed to implement this
intervention.
Incorporate three to five resources to support your plan.
In addition to your written paper, prepare a brief 5-7 slide PowerPoint presentation of
your proposed health communication intervention, including speaker notes.
Health Communication Intervention
Health Communication Intervention Goal
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Health communication focuses on enlightening individuals at risk while forming the basis
for influencing the perception and decision-making aspects relating to the underlying issues
within the environment. Public health issues affect individuals necessitating the promotion of
health literacy and sustaining the adoption of positive behavioral aspects for change. Obesity is a
major public health issue that impacts on the overall wellbeing of persons as it increases the risk
of chronic diseases including respiratory problems, diabetes type 2, and coronary heart disease
among other acute medical conditions (Medina-Remón et al., 2017). The overall communication
intervention goal for obesity gears to reduce the incidences of the condition among the
population while focusing on reducing the risk of obesity and engaging in healthy living. Given
the high incidences of morbidities and mortalities arising from obesity and overweight, the
communication approach seeks to increase cognizance of the disease condition with a focus on
promoting measures to reduce its prevalence among different populations. Through the plan, it
would be possible to realize a change in actions involving individual risk factors for the patients
thereby improving the quality of life.
Objectives
The specific goals of the health communication intervention intend to create and develop
social change through the focus on culture, norms, and values that increase the risks of
individuals becoming obese and overweight. While recognizing that social aspects of the society
have a direct influence in the actions and attributions of individuals, it is essential to focus on
promoting a community-wide perspective in realizing a collective change towards embedding
positive social values as the objectives for change. Thus, spurring change across the social space
will recreate a new sense of responsibility among the individuals in reducing their predisposition
to the public health risk. Second, health communication interventions endeavor to influence the
HEALTH COMMUNICATION INTERVENTION 3
individual behaviors of individuals in the prevention and management of obesity. It is evident
that the behavioral perspectives of individuals result in their risk of different disease conditions.
Moreover, institutions have a responsibility of improving awareness and conducting training
relating to various disease conditions that impact on the wellbeing of individuals. Thus, the
health communication intervention will endeavor to elicit change through health communication
campaigns in realizing change among the population as an objective aiming to increase
awareness and catalyze change among the population.
Situation and audience analysis
Obesity and overweight arises from the consumption of unhealthy diet and failure to
engage in regular exercise that results in an imbalance in the body energy and fats. In addition, a
combination of factors including the family’s genetic history, environmental factors, and
psychological factors have a great influence on the potential of individuals becoming obese
(Ross, Flynn & Pate, 2016). The young and middle-aged populations are usually at greater risk
of obesity across many populations. Most of the young populations given the peer influence tend
to engage in practices that exacerbate their risk for obesity with an individual’s socioeconomic
background playing a critical aspect of determining their risk for obesity. Therefore, an increased
communication focus on the young and middle-aged populations has a significant impact on the
potential for reducing the risk factors for the individuals. The influence of the factors increases
the individual susceptibility and risk of obesity as a health issue among the population. While
acknowledging the specific aspects of the public health issue, various factors influence the
adoption of new behaviors. The surrounding greatly impacts on one’s behavior and the
consequent acceptance of their situation thereby focusing on alleviating their condition (Allender
et al., 2015). Additionally, motivation for the young population and those at risk of obesity and
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the educational approaches for improving their situations have a great influence on the ability to
embrace positive behavior.
Communication objectives
The communication will intend to develop an in-depth comprehension and awareness of
the underlying factors that could impact on their health. Therefore, the communication objectives
endeavor to equip the individuals and the society with adequate and relevant skills that they
could utilize in reducing their vulnerability and susceptibility towards the disease-related
conditions. The application of the skills provides a realistic communication objective towards
initializing change and promoting wide-ranging implementing different perspectives towards
managing behavior (Swinburn et al., 2015). While realizing the societies and organizational
efforts in sustaining change, the communication objective would target to increase their
functionality in promoting the individual and societal resilience towards the communication
objectives. Besides, the communication objectives provide a means of transforming individual
and societal attitudes towards sustaining the change and focus on reducing the risk factors
associated with obesity within their society.
Communication Strategies
Technology adoption among the young population provides a means of reaching out to
the target audience in real-time while receiving feedback and tracking the aspects of progressive
change. Besides, different communication media would be appropriate for various populations.
The use of mass-reach communication interventions would be best suited for most of the groups
(Mclean et al., 2016). The social media campaigns and the use of television and audio outlets
will be critical in reaching out to the target population and audiences (Leeman et al., 2015: Dixon
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et al., 2015). The choice of the mass media communication strategy is imperative in reaching out
to the population at a given time while engaging them in the interaction through different
feedback patterns.
Action plan
The health communication intervention messages will include insights into the risk
factors and disease that could arise due to obesity with a focus on promoting a healthy lifestyle.
The messages will entail and focus on behavior change including the need to adopt healthy
consumption patterns and engage in regular exercise as a check on the risk of overweight. The
use of youth groups and participants will form part of the greater initiative towards increases a
sense of belonging with the activities ranging from engaging in demonstrations of work-outs
through the communication channels. Moreover, the key stakeholders will include the health
physicians who will inform on the critical aspects of the health issue and health counselors who
will endeavor to reduce obesity and overweight associated stigma among the populations. The
implementation of the communication interventions will be over a period of six months as a way
of evaluating its impacts and reaching out to the target population and audience. Nonetheless, the
potential barriers may include limited resources to engage a variety of stakeholders and the long-
term necessary approach in reaching out to the audience as a means of sustaining a positive and
healthy lifestyle in reducing the community risk.
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Budget
INDIVIDUALS/RESOURCES NUMBERS COST
Health physicians 5 $500
Health counselors 5 $1,000
Youth groups 5 $1,500
Advertisements $1,000
Reading materials; pamphlets,
books
1000 $2,000
TOTAL $6,000
The program will require the input of various health practitioners, counselors and youth
groups who will be tasked with the responsibility of reaching out to the overweight and obese
risk population. The groups will develop the prerequisite content for the health communication
intervention that will be provided as advertisements in targeting to change the behavior,
attitudes, and approaches in reducing the vulnerability of the target audience.
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References
Allender, S., Owen, B., Kuhlberg, J., Lowe, J., Nagorcka-Smith, P., Whelan, J., & Bell, C.
(2015). A Community Based Systems Diagram of Obesity Causes. PLOS ONE, 10(7),
e0129683. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0129683
Dixon, H., Scully, M., Durkin, S., Brennan, E., Cotter, T., Maloney, S., … Wakefield, M. (2015).
Finding the keys to successful adult-targeted advertisements on obesity prevention: an
experimental audience testing study. BMC Public Health, 15(1). doi:10.1186/s12889-
015-2159-6
Leeman, J., Myers, A. E., Ribisl, K. M., & Ammerman, A. S. (2014). Disseminating Policy and
Environmental Change Interventions: Insights from Obesity Prevention and Tobacco
Control. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 22(3), 301-311.
doi:10.1007/s12529-014-9427-1
Mclean, M., Afshin, A., Babalola, D., Yu, Z., Ma, W., Chen, C., … Mozaffarian, D. (2016).
Information Technology and Lifestyle: A Systematic Evaluation of Internet and Mobile
Interventions for Improving Diet, Physical Activity, Obesity, Tobacco, and Alcohol
Use. Journal of the American Heart Association, 5(9). doi:10.1161/jaha.115.003058
Medina-Remón, A., Kirwan, R., Lamuela-Raventós, R. M., & Estruch, R. (2017). Dietary
patterns and the risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases, asthma,
and neurodegenerative diseases. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 58(2),
262-296.