Category: Health Communication

Health Communicators Can Help Close Gaps in Health Disparities

This graphic depicts diverse people collaborating and discussing ideas about innovation, technical packages, performance management, partnerships communication, and political commitment to reduce health disparities.
This graphic depicts diverse people collaborating and discussing ideas about innovation, technical packages, performance management, partnerships communication, and political commitment to reduce health disparities.

Recommendations for
Health Communicators:

How to Close Gaps in Health Equity and Disparities Through Policies, Systems or Environmental Changes?

 

  • Design and implement interventions with a focus on communities experiencing disparities.

 

  • Actively engage representatives of communities experiencing disparities in all aspects of prevention strategies.

 

  • Ensure that interventions are appropriate to the communities they are intended to support (e.g., using culturally relevant language, images, decision making, and communication processes).

 

  • Strengthen the capacity of communities to enhance the likelihood of successful change.

 

  • Engage community members in dialogue about health equity issues by providing workshops on digital storytelling to gather stories, empower community members, and promote positive health changes in the community.

 

  • Then, invite local stakeholders to community meetings and forums where community members can showcase their videos and have a discussion.

 

  • Create templates and worksheets to promote conversation among key stakeholders and community groups when carrying out meetings and health equity discussions.

 

  • Use policy, systems, and environmental change strategies that are sustainable and likely to reach large numbers of individuals and families while ensuring that these approaches do not widen health and equity disparities.

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How Health Communication Fits into The Topic of Health Equity and Disparities

The following sequence of events illustrates how health communications fit into the topic of health equity and disparities.

► Employing a theory picker to aid in the selection of the best possible intervention model

► to in turn design an effective health initiative

► which is subsequently implemented in an appropriate manner

► and delivers visible and measurable results

 

 

As health communicators, it is crucial to remember the following when addressing social determinants of health inequities: 

 

  • Make sure group members are communicating effectively with one another and have access to all of the same communication channels you’re using in your health initiative.
  • Include groups that in the past haven’t been part of or participated in public health initiatives.
  • Keep effective communication going.

 

With health communication, we can address specific factors when designing strategies to prevent health conditions, this results in maximizing health impact and advancing health equity.

HealthComm’s Role Advancing Health Equity

What we've learned from the health impact pyramid is that by directing our efforts on community-wide health plans, we'll have a better chance at generating more impactful and long-term outcomes on the health of people.

So, the base is representative of public health strategies directed at changing and enhancing the health of an entire population. This is where we would see the kinds of interventions that make the greatest impression on society's health. That's because these interventions are designed to reach a lot of people all at once, instead of one person at a time. Also, these responses ask for minimal effort from people as individuals.

healthimpactpyramid
The pyramid portrays the impact of various public health interventions.

As we move up towards the top of the pyramid, the interventions have less impact because they're mostly based on interventions that reach people on an individual basis, as opposed to the community as a whole.

Also, these interruptions (ahem, I mean interventions) require more effort on behalf of the individual.

In the middle, there's a third level of the pyramid, which Frieden explains "represents 1-time or infrequent protective interventions." [i]

That section reminds me specifically of the Theory Picker tool that we used in the last lecture. There’s a part where you identify whether the behavior you're looking to change is a "Just a 1-time thing, not something that must be done over and over to benefit health or avoid a health risk." [ii]

Continue reading HealthComm’s Role Advancing Health Equity