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