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

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February 1995 | 320 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc

"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


 
PART ONE: THEORY-DRIVEN APPROACHES TO HEALTH MESSAGE DESIGN
Roxanne Louiselle Parrott
Motivation to Attend to Health Messages
Presentation of Content and Linguistic Considerations

 
David R Holtgrave, Barbara J Tinsley and Linda S Kay
Encouraging Risk Reduction
A Decision-Making Approach to Message Design

 
Edward W Maibach and David Cotton
Moving People to Behavior Change
A Staged Social Cognitive Approach to Message Design

 
Jerold L Hale and James Price Dillard
Fear Appeals in Health Promotion Campaigns
Too Much, Too Little, or Just Right?

 
Jennifer L Monahan
Thinking Positively
Using Positive Affect When Designing Health Messages

 
Michael Pfau
Designing Messages for Behavioral Inoculation
Erica Weintraub Austin
Reaching Young Audiences
Developmental Considerations in Designing Health Messages

 
Kim Witte
Fishing for Success
Using the Persuasive Health Message Framework to Generate Effective Campaign Messages

 
 
PART TWO: AUDIENCE-CENTERED STRATEGIES FOR HEALTH MESSAGE DESIGN
Glen J Nowak and Michael J Siska
Using Research to Inform Campaign Development and Message Design
Examples from the `American Responds to AIDS' Campaign

 
Michael D Slater
Choosing Audience Segmentation Strategies and Methods for Health Communication
John McGrath
The Gatekeeping Process
The Right Combinations to Unlock the Gates

 
R Craig Lefebvre et al
Use of Database Marketing and Consumer-Based Health Communication in Message Design
An Example From the Office of Cancer Communication's `5 a Day for Better Health' Program

 
 
PART THREE: COMBINING THEORY AND PRACTICE: ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS
Sharon Lee Hammond
Supplementing Health Campaign Messages
Recent Developments in Informing Patients about Their Prescription Drugs

 
Roxanne Louiselle Parrott, Mary Louise Kahl and Edward W Maibach
Enabling Health
Policy and Administrative Practices at a Crossroads

 

Very well organised book with up to date concepts

Dr Florbela Soares Teixeira
Education, Coventry University College
June 2, 2016

Very well suited for campaigns related to behavior change etc.

Dr Nickesia Gordon
Communications , Barry University
January 14, 2016

For instructors

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ISBN: 9781506319544

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