1. Global health communication
Bella Mody, PhD
School of Journalism and
Mass Communication
CU Boulder

2. Jim Foege, former CDC Director:
“This is the golden age of global health…”
Jim Yong Kim, Dept of Social Medicine, Harvard Med School:
“10 million die of preventable diseases annually…”

3. Examples of Years of Life Lost (% 2002) to
-communicable diseases
-non-communicable diseases
-injuries (Source: WHO)
Brazil 30/50/20
Peru 43/42/15
India 58/29/13
Zimbabwe 90/7/4
USA 9/75/17

4. How social science researchers in Communication can help:
Interpersonal communication
Organizational communication
Media campaigns for public health communication

5. Today: focus on public health communication
How do we know it can potentially work?

6. Female infanticide in India
The decline in “zero-grazing” in Uganda

7. Exs of media mixes available
Lit %
F/M
Dly ppr
/000
%hh TV
% cells/
indv
Internet/
000
China
90/90 59 89 35 85
Thailand
91/95 20 92 63
110
Uganda
58/77 3 5 7 17

8. Beyond ministerial/doc campaign design
The Sesame Street model:
team production, evidence-based
Audience evidence needed at 4 stages:
1. pre-production establishment of specs
what to communicate, how to communicate
2. mid-production message pretesting
3. exposure testing after dissemination
4. impact evaluation

9. Interdisciplinary research methods for pre-production research:
Lit reviews
Experience interviews: practitioners
Unobtrusive observation of population
Open-ended group interviews
In-depth individual interviews
Random sample surveys for prevalence

10. Research methods for mid-production draft message testing
- appeal, comprehension, immediate recall, credibility, utility, action-ability:
-atomistic or holistic testing

11. Impact evaluation: third party outsiders, experimental and control groups