Communicating about health in an acceptable and holistic manner continues to remain a discipline in progress. COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the value of culturally sensitive, effective, and verified health education and communication [HEC] in promoting behavior change. Moreover, it unearthed the close interlinkages between social determinants and HEC.
Successful health communication efforts through the world have typically been an equitable and systematic balance of evolving theory, participatory population ventures, cultural sensitivity, comprehensive planning of media management, collaborative partnerships between stakeholders and adapting to changing social norms.
The course will be designed to give a clear overview of these complex inter-linkages and their distinct roles in education and communicating better health for populations.
This course will create an interactive platform for students to consider aspects such as social bias and barriers in health decision-making promotion; relationships among HEC and community gatekeepers; communication inequality; levels of public health communication; limitations of top- down approaches in interventions to change behavior and various examples of the impact and social responsibility of media and messages in health promotion.