Media impact on public opinion about health communication, behavioural change

By Dr. Caroline Nabuzale

‘Globally, more than 100 outbreaks around the world spread within 36 hours daily due to increased travel. Epidemics begin and end in communities'.

The ministry of health strategic plan phase three of 2010-2015 indicates that 31% of the 134 districts have trained village health teams (VHTs), in all the villages mainly because of inadequate funding in Uganda.

Where VHTs are functional, they have contributed to increasing health awareness, demand, and utilization of health services and significantly led to decongestion at health facilities as they timely treat minor illnesses.  

VHTs have further helped to increase community participation in local health programs. On the other hand, media helps to sensitize communities through engagement, training, and warning during crisis response which builds resilience and preparedness to epidemics.

As a result, the media helps to stop outbreaks which ultimately saves lives, restores services, and helps build resilience among the affected population.

Impact of health communication campaigns

Studies conducted in the United States of America in 2004 by Leslie B. Snydermark A. Hamilton, Department of Communication Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, USA, Elizabeth W. Mitchell, Campbell University, Buies Creek, North Carolina, USA, Dr. James Kiwanuka-Tondo associate professor, department of communication at North Carolina State University, USA and others suggest that seat belt, oral health, and drinking campaigns are more successful than campaigns on other topics. Campaign planners and researchers should use the estimated campaign effect sizes when dealing with the topics covered by the present meta-analysis of mediated health campaigns in the United States in order to examine the effects of the campaigns on behavior change among communities.

The same authors indicate that it's important to use enforcement messages for new epidemics like COVID 19 since campaigns with enforcement messages have greater success rates. Since the mean change in percent of population performing the target behavior was at 17% for enforcement campaigns, 5% for nonenforcement adoption campaigns, 3% for prevention campaigns, and 3% for non-enforcement cessation campaigns, among the studies that measured the percentage change. Furthermore, the same studies suggest that the Cessation of addictive behavior is difficult to achieve in interventions since smoking was the only addictive behavior tested in the meta-analysis and the impact size of anti-smoking campaigns was less than the non-addictive behaviors.

From the media economics perspective, media campaigns are more cost-effective than clinical interventions when the goal is to reach large numbers of people, especially in this digital age where information is available at the click of a button although traditional mediums of communication like televisions, radios, and newspapers are very relevant in information dissemination and can reach far geographical locations even in rural areas.

Furthermore, clinic-based education is usually far more expensive per person reached than through a media campaign. If the goal is to reach a relatively small number of people, clinic-based approaches may be more cost-effective.

Conclusion

Mediated health communication campaigns have an effect on behavior change in communities but they are short-lived since people tend to be forgetful especially when the epidemic has come to an end.

There is a need for Campaign planners to set modest goals for future campaigns which should involve research, objectives, campaign phase/ implementation, and evaluation of campaigns so that they are not reactive but rather employ pro-active measures in risk communication in order to change the behavior of the affected communities.

The writer is a postdoctoral research fellow at the department of communication, North Carolina State University American Association for University Women Fellow