13 thoughts on “Planning and Implementing a Health Communication Program”
Many of these terms outline in chapters 9-11 are familiar to me from nursing school. The SMART objectives have been taught to go with the nursing practice as a way to evaluate either teaching intervention or other nursing intervention. I completed a project on education of emergency department staff on key clinical findings about hypercapnic respiratory failure. Using this experience I will give examples of some of the key terms from this set of readings.
My goal was to equip emergency department staff to better recognize and initiate treatment of hypercapnic respiratory failure. The outcome objective was to decrease mortality, intubation, and ICU admission in this particular subset of patients. My primary audience was emergency department nurses with a secoundary audience of doctors, residents, management, and other medical staff. Being apart of the emergency department culture gave me an advance in obtaining a complete audience profile. It was easy for me to ask my peers what they knew about his concept to gauge learning needs. I learned that they don’t want another task or in-service to sit through so I had to put a lot of work into thinking how best to provide the information in a concise and easy to understand way.
The need for the information I provided to be evidenced based was very high especially since I was aiming to educate professional nurses as well as being evaluated by management. I sought to use qualitative, primary research because it better fit what I was attempting to show. I used a poster board in easy access to the entire department as well as badge cards that fit on the badge real of every staff member as my communication channels.
Evaluation of my education intervention was done mostly through verbal survey of my coworkers because I did not want to have them take another survey because they had already made known they didn’t want that. Because of this objectives and outcome were difficult to analyze, but overall reactions were positive.
This week’s readings were all about the health communication planning and implementation process. A lot of the material reminded me of the Program Planning class that I took last spring. A lot of the steps for a health communication plan are similar to a program plan. The first reading covered an overview of health communication planning including its benefits, different types, key steps, and elements of an effective plan. I think that like program planning, health communication planning is very important and beneficial. I feel that a program is much more likely to be effective and evaluable if it was thoughtfully planned out before implementation. With a plan you can cover all of your bases by taking the time to include stakeholders, determine strengths, weaknesses, and cost-effectiveness, and have complete clarity as to the program’s goals. I also thought it was important that this chapter noted how specific plans for health communication are needed even when it is part of a bigger planned intervention so that the communication side is just as well planned as the larger program itself.
The second reading dove deeper into one of the health communication planning steps- situation analysis and audience profile. I think it is really important to have a comprehensive understanding of your audience and their social/political environment so that the health communication can be best tailored for the population. When you are able to do this the health messages that the population will be seeing will be much more relevant to themselves and their experiences. If people can see themselves or relate to the specific public health issue/concern, they are more likely to care, get involved, or make that behavior change which can lead to higher rates of effectiveness for the intervention.
The last reading covered objectives and strategies for health communication plans. Just like in a program plan, you want your outcome and communication objectives to be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). This is something that I don’t think is being done enough of in public health. At my internship over the summer I worked on some small projects related to Southcoast Health’s Community Impact Grants. This was one of the first few years that they were requiring applicants to have “SMART goals†(they should be calling them objectives). While reading the applications I noticed some of them weren’t exactly hitting all of the points of SMART. This made me wonder if there hasn’t been enough professional training in my hometown area for those working in public health on program planning so that they understand how to form SMART objectives and why they are important. This is a skill I look forward to being able to bring to the area after graduation.
While reading for this week, I found that most of the information was unfamiliar to me. I have never engaged in programming nor have I ever considered that for my future work as a clinician. Thus, when I began to read, I was a little worried about how I would make connections between the readings and my own experiences. I learned a great deal about the strategic planning that goes into creating a health communication program, from creating goals, doing research, creating a plan, and measuring the success of the program with qualitative and quantitative measures.
However, as I read I began to think about my work as an audiologist and how I might be able to utilize the information I was reading about. I began to create a sort of hypothetical outreach program in my head. I considered how I might approach, for example, creating an outreach program for hearing conservation on a college campus.
Before reading, I would have most likely just created some handouts about hearing loss to pass out. In fact, I did do an event like this on a small scale as an undergraduate student. I was trying to promote healthy hearing habits on my campus, and did nothing more than create some flyers to pass out. It wasn’t a particularly successful event. Now, after reading, I can see how I might approach a task like this differently. I would set clear goals and would obtain research to determine the needs and habits of the population I wanted to reach. I would set clear goals and try to determine objective ways to measure the success of my program. Implementing the practices outlined in these readings would certainly improve the efficacy of a program.
The readings for this week focused on how to plan and implement a health communication campaign. Health communication campaigns are all around us, and one of the more notorious ones the book chapters keep referring to is campaigns to increase knowledge about the harmful effects of cigarettes. One part of Chapter 9 that stood out to me was when they discussed traditional planning versus participatory planning, and why participatory planning is not wanted by all cultures and communities. The reason being, participatory planning is based in Western-styled ideas. I thought this was interesting because in a lot of the public health classes I have taken, such as Group Dynamics or Community Development, there is more emphasis on bottom-up approaches. We want the community to be actively involved through the entire program planning process because the program is for them. I think it’s important to be able to step back and see what the community wants and how they want it done. Not all communities want to be directly involved. We shouldn’t assume that just because it is something we would want, means they want it as well. Talking to key stakeholders in the community would be a good start to figuring out which type of planning would be best.
As soon as I started the readings for the week, I was reminded of the program planning course we took last semester. These three chapters go in-depth about how to plan a health communication program. Because of this, I felt familiar with a lot of the reading. As part of our program plan, we had to create SMART objectives. I remember how detailed each objective had to be. It required you to have a lot of background information on the program you wish to implement, as well your capacity to implement it, and the receptiveness of your audience. SMART objectives are just as important in health communication campaigns, but I found it interesting to read that due to various reasons, quantitative measures are not always specified because for our outcome objectives, it was very important to include measurable quantities.
I think one thing that has been consistent throughout this course is the importance of knowing your audience, which this reading also touched on. As public health professionals, we have skill sets we can utilize to help us do our jobs. We may be experts in our field, but unless we are members of the target community for our program, we cannot ever be an expert of that community. The process of getting to know your target audience can be tedious, but it is an important step if you want to implement a successful program.
In the readings this week, I found several connections between health communication and fitting hearing aids on a patient. The first connection I made was between the health communication cycle and the process of fitting hearing aids on a patient. The health communication cycle is a rotating cycle between the planning stage, implementation/monitoring and evaluation/feedback/refinement. When fitting a patient with a hearing aid, there are several similar steps. First, you have to do research on the individual patient through case history questions, which helps you determine what types of hobbies they are interested in and their medical history. Using this information, you can plan for which type of hearing aid may work for them. Then, you give the patient the hearing aid and monitor their progress through follow-up appointments. As you follow-up with the patient, they might bring up situations where their hearing aid is not working as well as it could so you make adjustments to the hearing aid based on the patient’s feedback. After this whole process, the patient is happy with their hearing aid but the process will start back up again when the patient needs new hearing aids once the ones they are wearing get too old. The connection between the health communication cycle and hearing aid fittings helped me really visualize how long the health communication process can be and realize how many components go into the strategic planning process.
I also found a connection in the second reading, when it discussed how to report research findings. I made the connection specifically to SWOT, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This made me think about when we select the type of hearing aid we think will be good for the patient, we have to think about what positive attributes the patient has that could encourage their desire to use hearing aids, such as high self-advocacy and motivation. However, we also have to consider whether there are any negative attributes, like self-concept and whether they want to be seen using hearing aids. We also have to consider what the hearing aid will allow the patient to do, such as give them access to activities they enjoy doing, like going out to eat with friends and being able to understand the conversation. On the other hand, we have to think about potential threats, such as if a patient has low dexterity and might not be able to change small batteries easily. I thought it was really interesting that there are so many connections that can be made between two very different concepts, however it helped me remember the components of SWOT.
Another connection I made was between setting program objectives and setting objectives in a hearing aid fitting appointment. In terms of setting program objectives, there are several key factors that need to be considered such as considering all data, making sure objectives are audience specific, limiting the number of objectives, prioritizing objectives and defining barriers, as well as defining time frames. In terms of setting objectives with hearing aid candidates, there are many similar key factors. You need to consider the data you collected about their hearing to see if they would benefit from hearing aids. You need to consider the patient and their abilities, in terms of what they would be able to handle for technology level and size of the hearing aid. There is a form we give patients that actually allows them to come up with a set number of objectives that they want to achieve from the hearing aids, such as being able to hear their spouse at dinner, and then they can prioritize which objectives are the most important to them. At later appointments, we go back to this form and analyze whether we are meeting each objective. Finally, there is a defined amount of time for the trial period of the hearing aid and we need to make that clear to the patient. Although coming up with program objectives reaches a much wider audience, the steps can be simplified and compared to meeting the needs of one individual person looking for a hearing aid. Thinking about the health communication in terms of comparisons between health communication strategies/techniques and audiology has been really helpful in getting a better understanding of how health communication processes work for me as an audiology student.
While reading about health communication planning, implementation, I thought a lot about my program planning experience for a job I had over the summer for the department of human services programs in Cambridge. A health communication program relies heavily on planning/communication, implementation/monitoring and evaluation and feedback. These processes are similar for conducting a program plan.
My program plan was to help teens of color gain job readiness skills to work with a camp with individuals with disabilities and to be inclusive youth workers in training. At the beginning of planning this program, we had to speak with city hall and the community to see what what was lacking and needed. As Cambridge became more diverse, there was a need for more diverse and inclusive workers. The teens also needed a source of income to help alleviate many of the stressors they faced in their lives, so we decided to be a mayor’s program where teens enrolled in the program will receive money. To implement this program, our team had to think of barriers we may encounter. Some of the barriers we thought about were: the teens readiness to go to a community they are not familiar with, transportation to the camp, and scheduling conflicts with those who wanted to be in the program but also had summer school.
After addressing the barriers we modified our program plan to try to accomodate our students. In the first week, we outlined goals and expectations for the students so that they knew what was expected of them and what we hoped they would get from this experience. This relates a lot to what I read about outcome objectives being realistic and measurable. The sense of time was a big part of the reading and a big part of our program plan because we only had one summer. At the end of the summer, we had to create a presentation to embody the work we had done in the summer and to show the Mayor that the funding we were receiving made our outcome and program objectives possible.
In this week’s readings on planning and implementing and health communication program, the process of creating a successful communication plan was outlined in great detail. Key elements such as different approaches to planning, establishing objectives, organizing research, and outlining a strategy were all described in such a way that would seemingly make creating a health communication plan practically foolproof. Though not to say creating and implementing a program would be easy, I felt as though the readings were very thorough and might act as an excellent guide. I couldn’t help but become curious about what health communication programs exist related to the field of audiology, and how they compare to the recommendations in the readings about how to create an effective plan.
A topic that I am particularly interested in is hearing loss prevention and the promotion of using hearing protection. Upon doing some brief research, I found that The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has a “Hearing Loss Prevention Program” which aims to prevent occupational hearing loss. I was actually really excited to see how informative and useful this plan appeared to be on the CDC website. There is a clear mission statement with several links leading the viewers of the website to more in depth information such as specific program goals, the full program description, impact, and other hearing loss prevention resources. From what I read in our assigned readings and from the website, this plan carries the elements needed to be successful. It is even shown to be successful because there are program reviews and progress reports. I will attach a flier of this program published by NIOSH in September, 2018.
While I think that this particular health communication program looks wonderful, there is obviously always room for improvement. The reason why I am interested with this particular topic is not only because of my pursuit of a graduate degree in audiology, but also because I have worked as a bartender in exceptionally noisy college bars. When I first started, I did not wear hearing protection and would end the night with my ears in physical pain from working 8 hours with excessive noise exposure. It was not long before I invested in hearing protection and it made an incredible difference. While most of the older and more experienced employees chose to wear hearing protection, all of the student-aged bartenders did not. Knowing what I know, I can only imagine the kinds of damage working in such a noisy environment with no hearing protection will someday cause.
The hearing loss prevention programs that exist are specifically aimed at occupations in construction, warehouses, mining, etc. when there are plenty of other occupations that exist where employees are subject to dangerous levels of noise exposure. I would love to see a program such as this one extended to occupations such as bartending because I do not think there is enough advocacy for hearing loss prevention aimed at this occupation, even though research on the occupational noise exposure of bartenders does exist.
NIOSH [2018]. Hearing Loss Prevention Program. By Murphy, W., Azman, A., Masterson, E., Matetic R.J., Reeves, K., and Novicki, E. Atlanta, GA: Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, DHHS (NIOSH) Publication 2018–144,
The two main points that I got from these three readings, that were repeated in all of them, are that health communication needs to be research based and audience specific. The first reading was the overall process of planning health communication. The chapter pointed out that some health communication does not have the luxury to be totally planned out before implementing it, like in the case of emergencies. Planned out health communication allows for it to be effective and have lasting outcomes. The two main approaches to planning health communication is traditional planning, which is very top down and technical, and participatory planning, which involves the audience in the development and is dialogue based. It makes sense that behavioral and social changes are more likely to happen if the audience is involved because they are the ones that are living the problem and therefore know all the details of what is going on. Being able to get the audience involved is going to require interpersonal communication when gathering information from them either in groups or one on one interviews. It also allows for the community members to share their stories and highlight their specific struggles through their personal narrative.
The second reading focused on situational analysis and audience profile. Situational analysis is how all health communication planning should start. Situational analysis is bringing together all of the elements of the health issue at hand; the research, analysis of the community and individuals, behavior-related factors that are contributing to the health issue, and the policies already in place that deal with the specific health issue. Part of the situational analysis is creating an audience profile. This first step of planning is what will influence the health communication goals and objectives. It is also important that the audience as well as other stake holders are involved in the creation of the goals and objectives, so it is agreed upon what the outcomes of the health communication campaign should be. The third reading specifically addresses how to identify program objectives and strategies. There are two different branches of objectives, communication objectives and outcome objectives. Communication objectives are the objectives that need to be met before the outcome objectives can be accomplished. Communication objectives focus on changing knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs. Outcome objectives include social, behavioral, and organizational changes. Both types of objectives should be created based on the audience profile in order to create long lasting changes.
In this week’s readings, we learned of the health communication planning process and how often times there is a lack of information and clarity. This reading provided a step by step guide on planning and evaluation. It is especially important for policymakers to understand a program’s initiative and goals it is trying to achieve but in order to do so a concrete and detailed plan needs to be created. Fortunately, I took Program Planning last semester with Melody and I am currently taking Program Evaluation with Krishna, therefore, I am getting a detailed lesson in both areas. Health communication plan is a research-driven process and the terminology one adopts is crucial in guiding the planning and implementation stages. Goals and objectives should always be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound). This idea was emphasized throughout Program Planning and really assisted in having a clear and concise plan. According to Chapter 9 of the reading, the general Health Communication Cycle consists of Planning: research and audience-based, structured approach, strategic process, Implementation, and Monitoring: hard work to ensure spotless execution, monitor progress, results, and audience feedback, and lastly Evaluation, Feedback, and Refinement: starts during planning, a continuing part of the communication process (Pg 221).
Chapter 11 provided a practical guide of establishing communication objectives and strategies in order to help build knowledge on the technical skills that are needed in health communication planning. Usually, communication objectives help change knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, motivation, and human interaction. These changes can take on any level from the individual, group, organizational, to societal. However, it is important to ensure that communication objections have specific measurable parameters that can be used within the program evaluation phase to assess the success, efficiency, and the effect.
This week’s readings had a strong focus on the process of carrying out a health communication program. For me, these readings were similar to experiencing deja vu because as I read them I was able to connect my experience working at the DMH to specific steps. However, it was different in the sense that the Health Communication program was more internal. By this, I mean the health communication was within the department in order to serve the clients of areas better and get them into DMH facilities for help. I remember the overall goal of the health communication was e to ensure the DMH has the staff and resources to better serve their clients. For this, a lot of the data collection was done. The is where I came in as an intern. I compiled demographic information from the client database and grouped them into categories and separated them into regions to understand what groups of people lived in the same area. The same was done with the staff of DMH. As a result of these findings, one of the objectives for this project was “to increase the staff of color in order for the DMH to have a staff that is representative of its client base”. Majority of my experience was spent in the planning stage which was 3 months. Towards the end of the internship, I got to experience the implementation process when a hiring guide was implemented across the DMH which ultimately served to help hiring committees hire more staff of color especially in managerial and medical professional positions. One of the major points that was constantly brought up was that the having a diverse staff will help clients because there will be individuals who understand cultural beliefs and religious beliefs which is a huge barrier for care when it comes to mental health. This is a strategy to get more clients of color in the door and getting the help they need which is helping DMH fulfill its mission more fully.
This week’s readings were focused on the topic of planning and implementing a health communication program. Because I have already taken a program planning course, I found that there was a great deal of overlap between that course and these readings. One of the main similarities was the focus on research before beginning a program. In some of my past positions, I have found that many people create programs that are based on their experiences and intuition, rather than research; these programs have had varying degrees of success. But how can a program be created without understanding the context of the health problem and the target audience? Although basing a program off of research does not guarantee that the program will be effective at achieving its objectives, it provides guidance and a solid framework for program creation.
I found that these readings placed a greater emphasis on selecting a target audience than I had experienced in my program planning class. During that course, I had selected a very narrow audience for the program, just because I thought that the smaller the audience, the more manageable the program would be. I decided that my hazing education program would be restricted to women in social sororities at UMass Amherst. Now, reflecting on the information about developing a profile of the audience and audience segmentation, I believe that I could have been more deliberate about how I selected my target population. For example, in the eight social sororities at UMass, there are extremely different cultural beliefs relating to hazing. Therefore, it might have been more effective to further divide the audience into groups based on their organizational beliefs on hazing, and to address those two groups in different ways.
One concept that I think will be helpful in my current position is the idea of a SWOT analysis. I am currently a graduate assistant working between two departments, which often causes confusion about what I have access to and what resources are available. I think by doing a SWOT analysis I would be able to reflect more deeply on the barriers standing in the way of my current ideas, while determining the strengths of the organization that I can lean on.
This week’s readings discussed health communication programs, and why planning for them is a necessary part of the process. Each reading mentioned elements that are necessary to carry out a program. The readings made me think of last semester in Program Planning. In that class, we were encouraged to think about factors that can contribute to a program. Some of which include purpose, target audience, and ways to reach your target audience. We were also told to think about barriers, and things that would prevent our program from being successful. It also reminded me of SMART goals. Planners need to make sure that their objectives are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. SMART goals can also help planners have a better idea of how to implement a program, and whether they are hitting their goals.
While reading, I started to think about the difference between a program that was planned intentionally, and one that was not. The reading discussed the concept of “operating on emergency mode”. It is common for problems to be addressed when they come up, instead of taking preventive measures, and planning for them before they come us. This is an example of why health communication is important. A smoking cessation program aimed at youth can potentially prevent conditions that are a result of smoking. When designing programs, it’s important to do this with intention to increase the likelihood that this type of program will be effective.
Overall, these readings had the common theme of emphasizing the importance of using strong research to guide a health communication plan. A strong plan is supported by a foundation of background research, which should be gathered using methods appropriate for the target population. There should also be clear measures in place to evaluate the success of the program. The author emphasized that the target audience and other stakeholders should be involved in the planning stages whenever possible. The idea of pretesting the communication vehicles or messages with members of the target audience makes perfect sense. This reminded me of when I used to review IRB proposals from researchers. Often their recruitment fliers seemed to be developed as an afterthought with little or no effort. We would often ask investigators to remove technical jargon or revise confusing fliers, but this process was imperfect because even though we were trying to keep the potential participants in mind, we were usually not members of that target audience. They would certainly have benefitted from showing the examples to their potential participants to gather some feedback.
While reading Chapter 10, I realized that I had been thinking of the audience profile/situation analysis as a purely descriptive part of the health communication planning process. I appreciated that this reading provided an in-depth description of the components of a situation analysis. I thought it made sense for the authors to include the audience profile within the larger analysis, since the descriptive data from that profile can tie into many pieces of the analysis. The most memorable parts of this chapter were the examples included in the audience profile/segmentation section. Reading through the audience segmentation for the health topic of type 2 diabetes linked to diabetes made it clear how this type of document could guide the selection of target audiences. For example, I would probably target the group at the end that know they have a problem and want to change, but has some obstacles to achieving behavior change. I might also target the first two groups because they would benefit the most from carefully crafted information about type 2 diabetes and examples of ways to treat the condition. The example audience profile for less-involved parents was also a great example of how insightful this type of document could be. I liked that they focused on the parents’ poor time management skills and self-doubt as key influencing factors, and concluded that providing some simple ideas for improving their parenting (not advice/criticism) may be the most effective way to influence their parenting habits.
The readings this week clarified that developing a clear health communication plan helps to focus efforts. Some good ideas may come up that are outside of the set goals/objectives and this type of detailed planning provides a clear way to avoid focusing energy and resources on ideas that don’t fit with overall program. I also appreciated that the author emphasized how planning provides a way to ask for sufficient funding to actually carry out the intervention. In Appendix A, there was an example of a distributing a packet that at first glance I thought would cost relatively little. However, once they listed all of the activities needed to create and deliver the packet, it became clear that this could represent a significant expense.
Many of these terms outline in chapters 9-11 are familiar to me from nursing school. The SMART objectives have been taught to go with the nursing practice as a way to evaluate either teaching intervention or other nursing intervention. I completed a project on education of emergency department staff on key clinical findings about hypercapnic respiratory failure. Using this experience I will give examples of some of the key terms from this set of readings.
My goal was to equip emergency department staff to better recognize and initiate treatment of hypercapnic respiratory failure. The outcome objective was to decrease mortality, intubation, and ICU admission in this particular subset of patients. My primary audience was emergency department nurses with a secoundary audience of doctors, residents, management, and other medical staff. Being apart of the emergency department culture gave me an advance in obtaining a complete audience profile. It was easy for me to ask my peers what they knew about his concept to gauge learning needs. I learned that they don’t want another task or in-service to sit through so I had to put a lot of work into thinking how best to provide the information in a concise and easy to understand way.
The need for the information I provided to be evidenced based was very high especially since I was aiming to educate professional nurses as well as being evaluated by management. I sought to use qualitative, primary research because it better fit what I was attempting to show. I used a poster board in easy access to the entire department as well as badge cards that fit on the badge real of every staff member as my communication channels.
Evaluation of my education intervention was done mostly through verbal survey of my coworkers because I did not want to have them take another survey because they had already made known they didn’t want that. Because of this objectives and outcome were difficult to analyze, but overall reactions were positive.
This week’s readings were all about the health communication planning and implementation process. A lot of the material reminded me of the Program Planning class that I took last spring. A lot of the steps for a health communication plan are similar to a program plan. The first reading covered an overview of health communication planning including its benefits, different types, key steps, and elements of an effective plan. I think that like program planning, health communication planning is very important and beneficial. I feel that a program is much more likely to be effective and evaluable if it was thoughtfully planned out before implementation. With a plan you can cover all of your bases by taking the time to include stakeholders, determine strengths, weaknesses, and cost-effectiveness, and have complete clarity as to the program’s goals. I also thought it was important that this chapter noted how specific plans for health communication are needed even when it is part of a bigger planned intervention so that the communication side is just as well planned as the larger program itself.
The second reading dove deeper into one of the health communication planning steps- situation analysis and audience profile. I think it is really important to have a comprehensive understanding of your audience and their social/political environment so that the health communication can be best tailored for the population. When you are able to do this the health messages that the population will be seeing will be much more relevant to themselves and their experiences. If people can see themselves or relate to the specific public health issue/concern, they are more likely to care, get involved, or make that behavior change which can lead to higher rates of effectiveness for the intervention.
The last reading covered objectives and strategies for health communication plans. Just like in a program plan, you want your outcome and communication objectives to be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). This is something that I don’t think is being done enough of in public health. At my internship over the summer I worked on some small projects related to Southcoast Health’s Community Impact Grants. This was one of the first few years that they were requiring applicants to have “SMART goals†(they should be calling them objectives). While reading the applications I noticed some of them weren’t exactly hitting all of the points of SMART. This made me wonder if there hasn’t been enough professional training in my hometown area for those working in public health on program planning so that they understand how to form SMART objectives and why they are important. This is a skill I look forward to being able to bring to the area after graduation.
While reading for this week, I found that most of the information was unfamiliar to me. I have never engaged in programming nor have I ever considered that for my future work as a clinician. Thus, when I began to read, I was a little worried about how I would make connections between the readings and my own experiences. I learned a great deal about the strategic planning that goes into creating a health communication program, from creating goals, doing research, creating a plan, and measuring the success of the program with qualitative and quantitative measures.
However, as I read I began to think about my work as an audiologist and how I might be able to utilize the information I was reading about. I began to create a sort of hypothetical outreach program in my head. I considered how I might approach, for example, creating an outreach program for hearing conservation on a college campus.
Before reading, I would have most likely just created some handouts about hearing loss to pass out. In fact, I did do an event like this on a small scale as an undergraduate student. I was trying to promote healthy hearing habits on my campus, and did nothing more than create some flyers to pass out. It wasn’t a particularly successful event. Now, after reading, I can see how I might approach a task like this differently. I would set clear goals and would obtain research to determine the needs and habits of the population I wanted to reach. I would set clear goals and try to determine objective ways to measure the success of my program. Implementing the practices outlined in these readings would certainly improve the efficacy of a program.
The readings for this week focused on how to plan and implement a health communication campaign. Health communication campaigns are all around us, and one of the more notorious ones the book chapters keep referring to is campaigns to increase knowledge about the harmful effects of cigarettes. One part of Chapter 9 that stood out to me was when they discussed traditional planning versus participatory planning, and why participatory planning is not wanted by all cultures and communities. The reason being, participatory planning is based in Western-styled ideas. I thought this was interesting because in a lot of the public health classes I have taken, such as Group Dynamics or Community Development, there is more emphasis on bottom-up approaches. We want the community to be actively involved through the entire program planning process because the program is for them. I think it’s important to be able to step back and see what the community wants and how they want it done. Not all communities want to be directly involved. We shouldn’t assume that just because it is something we would want, means they want it as well. Talking to key stakeholders in the community would be a good start to figuring out which type of planning would be best.
As soon as I started the readings for the week, I was reminded of the program planning course we took last semester. These three chapters go in-depth about how to plan a health communication program. Because of this, I felt familiar with a lot of the reading. As part of our program plan, we had to create SMART objectives. I remember how detailed each objective had to be. It required you to have a lot of background information on the program you wish to implement, as well your capacity to implement it, and the receptiveness of your audience. SMART objectives are just as important in health communication campaigns, but I found it interesting to read that due to various reasons, quantitative measures are not always specified because for our outcome objectives, it was very important to include measurable quantities.
I think one thing that has been consistent throughout this course is the importance of knowing your audience, which this reading also touched on. As public health professionals, we have skill sets we can utilize to help us do our jobs. We may be experts in our field, but unless we are members of the target community for our program, we cannot ever be an expert of that community. The process of getting to know your target audience can be tedious, but it is an important step if you want to implement a successful program.
In the readings this week, I found several connections between health communication and fitting hearing aids on a patient. The first connection I made was between the health communication cycle and the process of fitting hearing aids on a patient. The health communication cycle is a rotating cycle between the planning stage, implementation/monitoring and evaluation/feedback/refinement. When fitting a patient with a hearing aid, there are several similar steps. First, you have to do research on the individual patient through case history questions, which helps you determine what types of hobbies they are interested in and their medical history. Using this information, you can plan for which type of hearing aid may work for them. Then, you give the patient the hearing aid and monitor their progress through follow-up appointments. As you follow-up with the patient, they might bring up situations where their hearing aid is not working as well as it could so you make adjustments to the hearing aid based on the patient’s feedback. After this whole process, the patient is happy with their hearing aid but the process will start back up again when the patient needs new hearing aids once the ones they are wearing get too old. The connection between the health communication cycle and hearing aid fittings helped me really visualize how long the health communication process can be and realize how many components go into the strategic planning process.
I also found a connection in the second reading, when it discussed how to report research findings. I made the connection specifically to SWOT, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This made me think about when we select the type of hearing aid we think will be good for the patient, we have to think about what positive attributes the patient has that could encourage their desire to use hearing aids, such as high self-advocacy and motivation. However, we also have to consider whether there are any negative attributes, like self-concept and whether they want to be seen using hearing aids. We also have to consider what the hearing aid will allow the patient to do, such as give them access to activities they enjoy doing, like going out to eat with friends and being able to understand the conversation. On the other hand, we have to think about potential threats, such as if a patient has low dexterity and might not be able to change small batteries easily. I thought it was really interesting that there are so many connections that can be made between two very different concepts, however it helped me remember the components of SWOT.
Another connection I made was between setting program objectives and setting objectives in a hearing aid fitting appointment. In terms of setting program objectives, there are several key factors that need to be considered such as considering all data, making sure objectives are audience specific, limiting the number of objectives, prioritizing objectives and defining barriers, as well as defining time frames. In terms of setting objectives with hearing aid candidates, there are many similar key factors. You need to consider the data you collected about their hearing to see if they would benefit from hearing aids. You need to consider the patient and their abilities, in terms of what they would be able to handle for technology level and size of the hearing aid. There is a form we give patients that actually allows them to come up with a set number of objectives that they want to achieve from the hearing aids, such as being able to hear their spouse at dinner, and then they can prioritize which objectives are the most important to them. At later appointments, we go back to this form and analyze whether we are meeting each objective. Finally, there is a defined amount of time for the trial period of the hearing aid and we need to make that clear to the patient. Although coming up with program objectives reaches a much wider audience, the steps can be simplified and compared to meeting the needs of one individual person looking for a hearing aid. Thinking about the health communication in terms of comparisons between health communication strategies/techniques and audiology has been really helpful in getting a better understanding of how health communication processes work for me as an audiology student.
While reading about health communication planning, implementation, I thought a lot about my program planning experience for a job I had over the summer for the department of human services programs in Cambridge. A health communication program relies heavily on planning/communication, implementation/monitoring and evaluation and feedback. These processes are similar for conducting a program plan.
My program plan was to help teens of color gain job readiness skills to work with a camp with individuals with disabilities and to be inclusive youth workers in training. At the beginning of planning this program, we had to speak with city hall and the community to see what what was lacking and needed. As Cambridge became more diverse, there was a need for more diverse and inclusive workers. The teens also needed a source of income to help alleviate many of the stressors they faced in their lives, so we decided to be a mayor’s program where teens enrolled in the program will receive money. To implement this program, our team had to think of barriers we may encounter. Some of the barriers we thought about were: the teens readiness to go to a community they are not familiar with, transportation to the camp, and scheduling conflicts with those who wanted to be in the program but also had summer school.
After addressing the barriers we modified our program plan to try to accomodate our students. In the first week, we outlined goals and expectations for the students so that they knew what was expected of them and what we hoped they would get from this experience. This relates a lot to what I read about outcome objectives being realistic and measurable. The sense of time was a big part of the reading and a big part of our program plan because we only had one summer. At the end of the summer, we had to create a presentation to embody the work we had done in the summer and to show the Mayor that the funding we were receiving made our outcome and program objectives possible.
In this week’s readings on planning and implementing and health communication program, the process of creating a successful communication plan was outlined in great detail. Key elements such as different approaches to planning, establishing objectives, organizing research, and outlining a strategy were all described in such a way that would seemingly make creating a health communication plan practically foolproof. Though not to say creating and implementing a program would be easy, I felt as though the readings were very thorough and might act as an excellent guide. I couldn’t help but become curious about what health communication programs exist related to the field of audiology, and how they compare to the recommendations in the readings about how to create an effective plan.
A topic that I am particularly interested in is hearing loss prevention and the promotion of using hearing protection. Upon doing some brief research, I found that The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has a “Hearing Loss Prevention Program” which aims to prevent occupational hearing loss. I was actually really excited to see how informative and useful this plan appeared to be on the CDC website. There is a clear mission statement with several links leading the viewers of the website to more in depth information such as specific program goals, the full program description, impact, and other hearing loss prevention resources. From what I read in our assigned readings and from the website, this plan carries the elements needed to be successful. It is even shown to be successful because there are program reviews and progress reports. I will attach a flier of this program published by NIOSH in September, 2018.
While I think that this particular health communication program looks wonderful, there is obviously always room for improvement. The reason why I am interested with this particular topic is not only because of my pursuit of a graduate degree in audiology, but also because I have worked as a bartender in exceptionally noisy college bars. When I first started, I did not wear hearing protection and would end the night with my ears in physical pain from working 8 hours with excessive noise exposure. It was not long before I invested in hearing protection and it made an incredible difference. While most of the older and more experienced employees chose to wear hearing protection, all of the student-aged bartenders did not. Knowing what I know, I can only imagine the kinds of damage working in such a noisy environment with no hearing protection will someday cause.
The hearing loss prevention programs that exist are specifically aimed at occupations in construction, warehouses, mining, etc. when there are plenty of other occupations that exist where employees are subject to dangerous levels of noise exposure. I would love to see a program such as this one extended to occupations such as bartending because I do not think there is enough advocacy for hearing loss prevention aimed at this occupation, even though research on the occupational noise exposure of bartenders does exist.
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2018-144/pdfs/2018-144.pdf?id=10.26616/NIOSHPUB2018144
NIOSH [2018]. Hearing Loss Prevention Program. By Murphy, W., Azman, A., Masterson, E., Matetic R.J., Reeves, K., and Novicki, E. Atlanta, GA: Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, DHHS (NIOSH) Publication 2018–144,
The two main points that I got from these three readings, that were repeated in all of them, are that health communication needs to be research based and audience specific. The first reading was the overall process of planning health communication. The chapter pointed out that some health communication does not have the luxury to be totally planned out before implementing it, like in the case of emergencies. Planned out health communication allows for it to be effective and have lasting outcomes. The two main approaches to planning health communication is traditional planning, which is very top down and technical, and participatory planning, which involves the audience in the development and is dialogue based. It makes sense that behavioral and social changes are more likely to happen if the audience is involved because they are the ones that are living the problem and therefore know all the details of what is going on. Being able to get the audience involved is going to require interpersonal communication when gathering information from them either in groups or one on one interviews. It also allows for the community members to share their stories and highlight their specific struggles through their personal narrative.
The second reading focused on situational analysis and audience profile. Situational analysis is how all health communication planning should start. Situational analysis is bringing together all of the elements of the health issue at hand; the research, analysis of the community and individuals, behavior-related factors that are contributing to the health issue, and the policies already in place that deal with the specific health issue. Part of the situational analysis is creating an audience profile. This first step of planning is what will influence the health communication goals and objectives. It is also important that the audience as well as other stake holders are involved in the creation of the goals and objectives, so it is agreed upon what the outcomes of the health communication campaign should be. The third reading specifically addresses how to identify program objectives and strategies. There are two different branches of objectives, communication objectives and outcome objectives. Communication objectives are the objectives that need to be met before the outcome objectives can be accomplished. Communication objectives focus on changing knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs. Outcome objectives include social, behavioral, and organizational changes. Both types of objectives should be created based on the audience profile in order to create long lasting changes.
In this week’s readings, we learned of the health communication planning process and how often times there is a lack of information and clarity. This reading provided a step by step guide on planning and evaluation. It is especially important for policymakers to understand a program’s initiative and goals it is trying to achieve but in order to do so a concrete and detailed plan needs to be created. Fortunately, I took Program Planning last semester with Melody and I am currently taking Program Evaluation with Krishna, therefore, I am getting a detailed lesson in both areas. Health communication plan is a research-driven process and the terminology one adopts is crucial in guiding the planning and implementation stages. Goals and objectives should always be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound). This idea was emphasized throughout Program Planning and really assisted in having a clear and concise plan. According to Chapter 9 of the reading, the general Health Communication Cycle consists of Planning: research and audience-based, structured approach, strategic process, Implementation, and Monitoring: hard work to ensure spotless execution, monitor progress, results, and audience feedback, and lastly Evaluation, Feedback, and Refinement: starts during planning, a continuing part of the communication process (Pg 221).
Chapter 11 provided a practical guide of establishing communication objectives and strategies in order to help build knowledge on the technical skills that are needed in health communication planning. Usually, communication objectives help change knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, motivation, and human interaction. These changes can take on any level from the individual, group, organizational, to societal. However, it is important to ensure that communication objections have specific measurable parameters that can be used within the program evaluation phase to assess the success, efficiency, and the effect.
This week’s readings had a strong focus on the process of carrying out a health communication program. For me, these readings were similar to experiencing deja vu because as I read them I was able to connect my experience working at the DMH to specific steps. However, it was different in the sense that the Health Communication program was more internal. By this, I mean the health communication was within the department in order to serve the clients of areas better and get them into DMH facilities for help. I remember the overall goal of the health communication was e to ensure the DMH has the staff and resources to better serve their clients. For this, a lot of the data collection was done. The is where I came in as an intern. I compiled demographic information from the client database and grouped them into categories and separated them into regions to understand what groups of people lived in the same area. The same was done with the staff of DMH. As a result of these findings, one of the objectives for this project was “to increase the staff of color in order for the DMH to have a staff that is representative of its client base”. Majority of my experience was spent in the planning stage which was 3 months. Towards the end of the internship, I got to experience the implementation process when a hiring guide was implemented across the DMH which ultimately served to help hiring committees hire more staff of color especially in managerial and medical professional positions. One of the major points that was constantly brought up was that the having a diverse staff will help clients because there will be individuals who understand cultural beliefs and religious beliefs which is a huge barrier for care when it comes to mental health. This is a strategy to get more clients of color in the door and getting the help they need which is helping DMH fulfill its mission more fully.
This week’s readings were focused on the topic of planning and implementing a health communication program. Because I have already taken a program planning course, I found that there was a great deal of overlap between that course and these readings. One of the main similarities was the focus on research before beginning a program. In some of my past positions, I have found that many people create programs that are based on their experiences and intuition, rather than research; these programs have had varying degrees of success. But how can a program be created without understanding the context of the health problem and the target audience? Although basing a program off of research does not guarantee that the program will be effective at achieving its objectives, it provides guidance and a solid framework for program creation.
I found that these readings placed a greater emphasis on selecting a target audience than I had experienced in my program planning class. During that course, I had selected a very narrow audience for the program, just because I thought that the smaller the audience, the more manageable the program would be. I decided that my hazing education program would be restricted to women in social sororities at UMass Amherst. Now, reflecting on the information about developing a profile of the audience and audience segmentation, I believe that I could have been more deliberate about how I selected my target population. For example, in the eight social sororities at UMass, there are extremely different cultural beliefs relating to hazing. Therefore, it might have been more effective to further divide the audience into groups based on their organizational beliefs on hazing, and to address those two groups in different ways.
One concept that I think will be helpful in my current position is the idea of a SWOT analysis. I am currently a graduate assistant working between two departments, which often causes confusion about what I have access to and what resources are available. I think by doing a SWOT analysis I would be able to reflect more deeply on the barriers standing in the way of my current ideas, while determining the strengths of the organization that I can lean on.
This week’s readings discussed health communication programs, and why planning for them is a necessary part of the process. Each reading mentioned elements that are necessary to carry out a program. The readings made me think of last semester in Program Planning. In that class, we were encouraged to think about factors that can contribute to a program. Some of which include purpose, target audience, and ways to reach your target audience. We were also told to think about barriers, and things that would prevent our program from being successful. It also reminded me of SMART goals. Planners need to make sure that their objectives are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. SMART goals can also help planners have a better idea of how to implement a program, and whether they are hitting their goals.
While reading, I started to think about the difference between a program that was planned intentionally, and one that was not. The reading discussed the concept of “operating on emergency mode”. It is common for problems to be addressed when they come up, instead of taking preventive measures, and planning for them before they come us. This is an example of why health communication is important. A smoking cessation program aimed at youth can potentially prevent conditions that are a result of smoking. When designing programs, it’s important to do this with intention to increase the likelihood that this type of program will be effective.
Overall, these readings had the common theme of emphasizing the importance of using strong research to guide a health communication plan. A strong plan is supported by a foundation of background research, which should be gathered using methods appropriate for the target population. There should also be clear measures in place to evaluate the success of the program. The author emphasized that the target audience and other stakeholders should be involved in the planning stages whenever possible. The idea of pretesting the communication vehicles or messages with members of the target audience makes perfect sense. This reminded me of when I used to review IRB proposals from researchers. Often their recruitment fliers seemed to be developed as an afterthought with little or no effort. We would often ask investigators to remove technical jargon or revise confusing fliers, but this process was imperfect because even though we were trying to keep the potential participants in mind, we were usually not members of that target audience. They would certainly have benefitted from showing the examples to their potential participants to gather some feedback.
While reading Chapter 10, I realized that I had been thinking of the audience profile/situation analysis as a purely descriptive part of the health communication planning process. I appreciated that this reading provided an in-depth description of the components of a situation analysis. I thought it made sense for the authors to include the audience profile within the larger analysis, since the descriptive data from that profile can tie into many pieces of the analysis. The most memorable parts of this chapter were the examples included in the audience profile/segmentation section. Reading through the audience segmentation for the health topic of type 2 diabetes linked to diabetes made it clear how this type of document could guide the selection of target audiences. For example, I would probably target the group at the end that know they have a problem and want to change, but has some obstacles to achieving behavior change. I might also target the first two groups because they would benefit the most from carefully crafted information about type 2 diabetes and examples of ways to treat the condition. The example audience profile for less-involved parents was also a great example of how insightful this type of document could be. I liked that they focused on the parents’ poor time management skills and self-doubt as key influencing factors, and concluded that providing some simple ideas for improving their parenting (not advice/criticism) may be the most effective way to influence their parenting habits.
The readings this week clarified that developing a clear health communication plan helps to focus efforts. Some good ideas may come up that are outside of the set goals/objectives and this type of detailed planning provides a clear way to avoid focusing energy and resources on ideas that don’t fit with overall program. I also appreciated that the author emphasized how planning provides a way to ask for sufficient funding to actually carry out the intervention. In Appendix A, there was an example of a distributing a packet that at first glance I thought would cost relatively little. However, once they listed all of the activities needed to create and deliver the packet, it became clear that this could represent a significant expense.