Everything You Need to Know about Community Health Communication

The National Cancer Institute defines health communication as the study of communication strategies to inform individuals’ decisions regarding improving health. In simple words, healths communication is about learning the use of communication strategies to inform varied people about the ways to improve health.

The entire field of human communication is based on the study of medicine and public health, aiming to motivate people to analyse the available information and take suitable health-related decisions.

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Students working on health communications assignment answers get to explore how the goals of communications are achieved by preparing the common public to familiarise themselves with the tools, skills, and verified information so they can fight different health issues with appropriate actions.

Download the samples chcece001 task answers

Key Components of Healths Communication

Health communication is all about integrating different health models and theories to bring about effective changes in people’s attitudes and behaviour for positive changes in the community. Various communications channels are used to shape messages for several community-level events and campaigns to:

• Increase awareness about health risks
• Encourage positive behaviours
• Empower everyone in the community to improve their health
• Increase the necessary services and support systems
• Create social norms

The critical components of developing effective health communication strategies include

• Using research-based strategies to develop materials and choosing the best channels to reach the targeted audience
• Gaining knowledge of different concepts, languages, and concepts to understand different communities and their cultures.
• Developing different kinds of materials, such as articles, commercials, television broadcasts, pamphlets, public service announcements, billboards, field trips, health awareness trips, etc., to build awareness.
• Using available digital tools and media exposure to promote literacy about heath and reach target people.

 

Community Health Communication Types  

Since the inception of modern healths communication in the 1800s, it has successfully integrated into different facets of our society. Healths communication can be divided into four types: health promotion, health communication technology, patient-provider-family caregiver interactions, and health care interventions. Let’s delve deeper to learn more about these general types of health communication.

• Health Promotion

Health promotion is designing different health campaigns to reach the targeted audience and spread awareness about different health issues. This type of communication often involves channels like marketing, strategic, and mass communication to focus on the issues and encourage people to make the necessary changes for a better and healthier lifestyle using engaging and interactive content.

• Health Communication Technology

When students write about healths communication technologies in their assessment answers, they mostly talk about telehealth services and health applications on mobile. However, learners must also understand that information technology, such as electronic medical records, is vital in keeping health care organizations up and running effectively. Plus, healthcare technologies are vital in streamlining the entire process, from promoting healthcare to supporting patient-caregiver interactions.

• Patient-provider-family Caregiver Interactions

The patient’s interactions with his or her family member or caregiver are crucial to the patient’s well-being. Effective communication between the health team, family caregivers, and the patient have consistently shown positive outcomes. Considering the significance of communication in healthcare, it’s also vital to understand the roles interpersonal communication, organisational communication, and family communication play in the overall patients’ healthcare experience.

• Health Care Interventions

Health care interventions involve communication between the patient, health care provider, and family caregiver to promote health using varied, informative content. It focuses on changing and improving specific health care need to address a specific health issue and bring about behavioural changes. For instance, health care interventions use educational pamphlets, group discussions, motivational interviews between patients and caregivers, and other online content to highlight issues and encourage people to adapt to changes.

Importance of Community-based Health Communication

We live in times when medicine and public health have undergone significant changes. There have been countless mind-blowing advances to improve health and community lifestyle. However, despite all the advancements, it’s also evident that collective effort is now necessary more than ever to fight health and social issues in different communities and bridge the inequality gap.

A community consists of people from different ethnicity, social backgrounds, and cultural and geographical areas. It often consists of a diverse group of people who must together to fight the challenges in the health care system and create a better and healthier world for the next generation.

Interestingly, reports suggest that an increasing number of communities are coming together to fight against healthcare-related odds. Community-based health communication is taking new forms, and communities are relying on different tools and channels to open up as a community, share their beliefs, express themselves, and acknowledge the suggested solutions.

Many positive outcomes come to mind when discussing the significance of community-based health communication. For example, community health communication has been instrumental in fighting and controlling the Ebola crisis in Africa. In addition, it has helped improve family planning methods in rural women’s communities in Ethiopia and strengthened healthcare facilities in Zambia.

Community Healths Communication – Key Barriers

Although good communication is the foundational layer of the healthcare system, professionals face several hurdles in maintaining open community healths communication. Here are some challenges that obstruct the entire process of effective community healths communication:

• People don’t trust the communicator, show disbelief and discomfort, question medical suggestions, and struggle with health-related trauma and anxiety.
• Language is a common barrier as a community has people from different language backgrounds. Since most healthcare providers don’t provide culturally competent healthcare facilities which include an interpreter, delivering adequate care falls short.
• Effective healths communication is often lost in the community because the healthcare workers feel stretched out. As a result, they lose patience and come across rude, creating a communication barrier between the care providers and communities.

 

Strategies to Maintain Effective Community Health Communication

Well-designed communication can help to reach people from different communities and inform the targeted group about a health issue and how to deal with it in the best possible way. So the most effective communication would be:

• Understanding an individual’s knowledge of the health condition and providing an unbiased, accurate, and non-judgmental solution.
• Acknowledging a community’s cultural and religious beliefs and considering the community members’ educational levels.
• Offering easy access to actionable resources and instructions and enable people to identify both risks and benefits

Community health communication is all about healthcare professionals and public health officials discussing health issues with people through different communication tools and mediums. Thus, the following recommendations may be beneficial to overcome the challenges discussed above.

• The healthcare provider must be polite and humble to build trust with the community people.
• Communication becomes easier when plain and easy-to-understand words are used to interact. Hence, communicators should avoid medical jargon and maintain a two-way chat to connect with the people.
• No having casual discussions about a patient with other members of the community. In addition, the entire health care unit should maintain confidentiality and limit access to the case files.
• Community health communication should allow people to feel safe without any form of discrimination. Therefore, healthcare bodies should hire and appoint interpreters for everyone in the community to be heard and understood.

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Tips for Running a Successful Community Health Communication Campaign

Community health communication class Help campaigns are designed to educate everyone in the community about a particular health issue and encourage them to adopt suitable behaviour for better health.

• Knowing the in-and-out of the issue is mandatory to assess its effects and find a proper solution.
• Each campaign should have a specific goal, and everyone should maintain clarity and focus on achieving that goal.
• Consider the challenges while crafting campaign messages. Then, explore different media to create sharp messages that are likely to create an impact on the community.
• Budget stringency is a common problem in most community healths communication campaigns.
• Try experimenting with different communication materials to grab your target audience’s attention.

 

Wrapping Up

Communication is vital in community health care. So, it’s time for healthcare leaders to recognise its significance and take the necessary actions to train more healthcare professionals about the importance of community health communication.

 

Author Bio

Joseph Bingley is a public health communication expert and has worked with several health care organizations to spread medical awareness among communities. He is also associated with MyAssignmenthelp.com, an online academic platform where students reach out to experts for personalized assistance with assignment answers. Besides work, Joseph enjoys reading, cooking, and listening to jazz.