Health Comm Central

McGuire’s Input-Output Matrix, also called the Communication-Persuasion Matrix (1999), is a simple but powerful communication framework you can use to methodically analyze key elements in a message or campaign and track how effective they are at persuading your audience.  In this episode we unpack both the inputs and the outputs so you can use it to add or adjust the elements you need for success....

If you work in public health, you are most likely well aware of the concepts of structural, systemic, and institutional racism and their impact on people’s ability to live long and healthy lives.  How do you get more comfortable with explaining these concepts to other people outside public health, especially audiences whose help you need to implement policy, systems, and environmental changes that...

Getting to the root cause of health disparities is essential because campaigns and interventions to change individual behavior will not be effective if the real problem requires a change in policies, systems, or the environment (or surrounding conditions) in which people live, work, and play.  Root cause solutions are also more sustainable, since they usually result in a longer lasting solution th...

This brief holiday message will point you toward a couple of past episodes that may be helpful to you over the next few weeks.  We also look at what’s coming in 2023 for Health Comm Central! We’ll be on hiatus for the holidays for a couple of weeks here at Health Comm Central, but we have lots of good stuff in store when we resume in January!  Happy Holidays to you! Please click the button to subs...

Even though Policy, Systems, and Environmental Change is about the context and not the individual, the secret to achieving PSE Change may be using individual behavior change theory.  That’s because changing laws, policies, and community conditions still requires persuading individual decision-makers to engage in new behaviors to support, fund, and implement proposed changes.  In this second part o...

Part One of Health Comm Central’s first series! Over the next few weeks we will be looking at research and recommendations related to Social Determinants of Health, one of the foundational frameworks we consider when developing health communication strategy and training.  Today’s episode focuses on the language we choose to talk about SDOH, health equity, and related concepts.  You might be surpri...

In Part Two of our two-part series about building trust and reducing polarization with the Change Conversation Cycle communication framework, we talk with its creator, Karin Tamerius, M.D. about how it could scale up, its potential for evaluation, and her thoughts on the challenges ahead to rebuild trust and reduce polarization around public health, science, politics, and other institutions. If yo...

For years now many families have avoided talking politics at the Thanksgiving table. But thanks to the politicization of science in the COVID era, now even our public health work may seem off limits for discussion with Angry Uncles or Conspiracy-Theory Cousins. But that could all change this holiday season if you give the Change Conversation Cycle a try. It’s a 5-step process for reducing polariza...

A campaign or intervention is only as successful as the weakest link in the chain of steps involved.  A critical final step after you’ve created your logic model or strategic plan is to take a hard look at every link in the chain to spot potential failure points.  We talk about how to anticipate, mitigate, and evaluate the things that could go wrong so you have a better chance of success… and a be...

Can you tell a data story without using numbers? Sometimes, yes – you can! Too often in public health we try to cram too many precise numbers into a message, making it more difficult to process and reducing its impact. In this episode, we talk about the importance of being a little less precise, and how we can still provide the data that both lay audiences and scientific or medical audiences may n...

Two names, so many uses! Every health communicator needs to be familiar with this go-to framework for segmenting audiences by their readiness for behavior change: the Transtheoretical (AKA “Stages of Change”) Model. Designed to be combined with other theories and frameworks, it’s the little black dress of health behavior theory: despite some limitations, it’s often perfect for almost any occasion....

Our audiences may be over it, but COVID isn’t over for public health communicators. Of course, wastewater virus levels are increasing, new variants are on the horizon, hundreds of people are still dying each day, and Long COVID is disabling millions. But pandemic fatigue is everywhere, and 1/3 of Americans still aren’t fully vaccinated. So how do we effectively message pandemic guidance now? The a...

You’ve heard of starter homes?  Well, this is your starter theory: the Health Belief Model.  We take a look at what has made this grandaddy of all health behavior frameworks so popular and what you need to know about some of its key components. We’ll also talk about the limitations that may make you want to move beyond it as you become more fluent with other theories and frameworks. Plus: you can...

What has enabled tech companies in Silicon Valley like Apple or Google to be agile and innovative and to lead the world developing new technologies? Design Thinking – an evidence-based approach to problem-finding and problem-solving that was born in the Stanford University design school and has been widely used in the tech sector to find faster, more creative, and more effective solutions to big c...

Even when people perceive a health risk as a real threat to their well-being or safety, their decision to follow public health guidance may come down to one factor: self-efficacy – the knowledge, skill, access, and confidence they must have to feel capable of “getting the job done.” Beginning with the Extended Parallel Process Model, we unpack self-efficacy’s pivotal role in making fear appeals ef...

In public health, we are up against any number of “wicked problems” – challenges so complicated and entrenched and sometimes, so polarizing – that they seem almost impossible to solve. Exactly the kinds of problems that systems thinking was designed to address. In this introduction to one of the fundamental approaches we use at Health Comm Central, we’ll talk about how systems thinking moves beyon...

Behavioral economics starts with the premise that humans often make terrible decisions: because we – all of us - are emotional, lazy, don’t like change, and often have faulty logic. But instead of trying to change people, behavioral economics works WITH human nature instead of against it. In our ongoing series of introductions to the foundational frameworks we love here at Health Comm Central, we...

Do you need to develop a brand? The answer might be yes, IF you want audiences to build a long-term relationship with your organization, intervention, or campaign. But creating a brand is a lot like a romance: to inspire passion and have a healthy “relationship,” it must feel reciprocal and your brand needs to prove that it’s a good partner. This episode breaks apart the basics of brand identity a...

If you’ve worked in public health for a while, you’ve heard of social marketing. But if you’re like many health communicators, you may not know exactly what it is or how it’s different than an ordinary public health campaign. You may even secretly wonder if it has something to do with Facebook or Twitter. Or perhaps you’re looking for a way to describe it to your coworkers or your leadership team....

Understanding social determinants of health (SDOH) is fundamental to the work we do in public health to ensure that people can live their healthiest lives. But it can sometimes be hard to explain social determinants fully and succinctly to people outside our field. Whether you are searching for the words to help teach others or you are new to public health yourself and still trying to get a handle...

Preparing a crisis plan is critical, but have you laid the foundation by conducting a crisis audit? Using the baby formula crisis as background, we share a 6 step process for determining your worst case crisis scenario and your most likely scenario. Get your organization focused on the data, partnerships, systems, and yes, of course – the messages – they need to prevent a crisis from interfering w...

The key to social movements that change norms is not overpowering our opponents but shifting support away from them. Today we’ll talk about an audience segmentation framework called the Spectrum of Allies that can help you choose the right strategies and tactics to move people closer to your position one incremental step at a time. We’ll talk about how we can adapt this political tool to the work...

Evidence-based theories and frameworks are the scaffolding every public health intervention and campaign should rest on.  Behavioral theory, communication theory, process models, conceptual frameworks…  We love theory at Health Comm Central not just because we’re nerdy like that, but because in the words of a very famous scholar who we’ll talk about in this week’s episode, “There is nothing more p...

The hostility some of us in public health have experienced over the last couple of years from science-deniers can be pretty demoralizing at times. In today’s episode, we’re going to explore the roots of anti-science bias, the playbook that anti-science propagandists use, and talk about some tools you can use to bridge gaps and more effectively communicate even when audiences are polarized and skep...

Real results to improve health outcomes and health equity start with behavioral science. Each week, public health professional and longtime communication strategist Karen Hilyard, Ph. D. will help you unpack behavior change theories and frameworks and apply them in practical ways to build a kick-ass health communication toolkit. Whether you’re a health comm nerd or a health comm novice, Health Com...