Assessment

Text Book: Edberg, M. (2015). Essentials of health behavior: Social and behavioral theory in public health (2nd ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

1. This unit provided the 10-step approach of putting a communication campaign together. Step 6 involves selecting the appropriate communication channels. Why would selecting the right channel or channels be so important? What would be some of the examples of those channels if you were trying to put a communication campaign together that was designed to increase awareness for young people about the need for physical exercise and better eating habits to address the problem of obesity?

2. What are some of the key components in the overall ecology of global health? Are these different from the ecological context for domestic health? If so, how? Please explain and provide supporting examples.

3. Does mobile technology and social media change the way communications theory can be applied? Or do these developments change the theory itself?

4. Imagine you are in charge of putting an anti-smoking communication campaign together (geared towards young adults) in your local community. Correctly identifying your target audience would be an important step. Who would be your target audience or audiences in this example? Are there any groups or sub-groups? Also, would you need to segment your audience in any way? Please address each of these questions and explain the overall importance of correctly identifying your target audience as part of your intended communication campaign.

Q. 1 Why is it important to specifically identify those individuals who are the most vulnerable in terms of getting a certain disease or diseases?

• Why do general or mainstream approaches typically not work on those high-risk populations or groups?

ARTICLE REVIEW (READ INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY AND PAY ATTENTION TO THE ITEM HIGHLIGHTED IN RED)

For this assignment, choose a peer-reviewed article to review. Use source that contains peer-reviewed articles, and find an article about a concept tied to the unit outcomes in this unit.

Write a three- to five-page review (not counting the cover page and references page) of the article that includes the following information:

• Briefly introduce and summarize the article.
• Identify the author's main points.
• Who is the author's intended audience?
• How does the article apply to this course? Does it support the information in your textbook?
• How could the author expand on the main points?

The article must be no more than three years old. Use APA style when writing your review.

UNIT VII STUDY GUIDE

Addressing Needs and Reaching Out To High-Risk Groups

Next, let's discuss the importance of implementing appropriate health promotion programs needed for high- risk groups. We have covered the various health promotion campaigns, strategies, and education, but we also need to consider how these positively influence people's health behaviors. Some of these examples are: alcohol campaigns, anti-smoking campaigns, announcements regarding healthy eating habits, and more physical activity. These are called general or mainstream campaigns. Think of these as activities that are trying to reach a large population.

For example, there could be a pregnancy-related campaign emphasizing how important it is for pregnant women to eat healthy foods or take prenatal vitamins, but what about a more specific population of pregnant women who have been drug users or alcoholics? This sub-group population is considered to be a high-risk group as they have a higher risk of having health-related issues during the course of their pregnancies, and their behaviors could have detrimental effect on their future newborns. Public health practitioners develop their strategies focused on smaller populations with a high risk of developing serious health issues/problems as a result of their unhealthy behaviors. These targeted, specific populations are so specific that the general population would not benefit from these types of health promotion programs.

Let's look at the public health challenge of HIV/AIDS and talk about some of the important aspects. It is well known and documented that this disease is a serious problem in developing countries-predominantly in Africa and parts of Asia. Having mainstream strategies will not be a feasible solution, as those high-risk populations will not be affected. Before the strategies are developed, public health practitioners need to understand who, specifically, in the general population would be most susceptible to contracting HIV. Then, the public health practitioner must identify the most vulnerable members.

The next step would be to understand and identify specific factors that are directly influencing people's susceptibility, vulnerability, and risk of contracting HIV. The main categories of the factors typically include biological factors, social factors, cultural factors, gender factors, and economic factors. Please note that access and understanding of the target population's ability to receive counseling, education, and treatment as well as income levels are all areas to consider. So the key takeaway here is vulnerable and high-risk populations might have certain behavioral patterns and certain social and cultural makeups that may influence their susceptibility to contracting HIV. The practitioners need to understand those patterns as well as the makeup and then move on to designing specific strategies in order to reach those vulnerable and high-risk groups.

So, as we have identified specific sub-groups, such as migrant workers, poor youth, prisoners, drug users, and sex workers, we need to also acknowledge each of these groups and specifically assess these groups' high-risk behaviors, their health needs, barriers to change, social and cultural factors, and economic status. Once we know all this information, we can start thinking of strategies or interventions designed specifically for each of those sub-groups. Please note that the following interventions need to be focused on prevention, care, support, and treatment. As you may already be aware, HIV can be a very serious issue in developing countries.

Importance of an Evaluation

Next, we will further discuss the need for a thorough and effective evaluation of your designed and implemented health promotion program, strategies, and interventions. The evaluation phase can provide feedback on success and challenges so the public health practitioners can learn from these. Also, by showing the contribution the program has made, as well as the value and worth of it, a public health agency can continue building onto its quality. Also, an evaluation can help create realistic expectations of the key stakeholders. Furthermore, it can create accountability (i.e., sponsors and key stakeholders might need to see evidence that resources had been spent appropriately).

There are two approaches that are typically used for evaluation. One is called quantitative and another is qualitative.

Quantitative evaluation is trying to measure or find a specific number or measurement of something. For example, if a program's objective was to decrease the number or people in a target group who smoke by 25% in a period of three months, by the end of our program we would like to measure or quantify the number of smokers to see whether their numbers had decreased by our desired 25%.

Qualitative evaluation, on the other hand, is more about how well our program was delivered and received by our participants. This type of evaluation relies more on participants' feelings, opinions, and reactions toward our program. Also, from this, we can see whether we could have done something better.

Please note that there are actually three commonly used methods of evaluating a health promotion program: impact evaluation, outcome evaluation, and process evaluation.

Impact evaluation: This evaluation assesses whether our program has had an immediate effect on the participants. In other words, did our program's activities actually motivate the participants to change their behaviors?

Outcome evaluation: Whereas impact evaluation measures an immediate impact, outcome evaluation assesses whether or not our program has had a lasting effect on the participants. As we know by now, a successful health promotion program tries to increase participation, educate, raise awareness, prevent, and motivate others to change their behavior. A successful health promotion program's evaluation can help the practitioners to determine whether their program's strategies or interventions reached the target groups in such a way that their behaviors were changed and their health status was improved.

Process evaluation: This step serves to evaluate and validate the how well the processes worked and any modifications that may be needed. If the processes need to be revised, this is the step to incorporate needed changes and re-evaluate the processes required to be successful.