Week 2 - How Theory Shapes Health Campaigns

Week 2....so much information and articles to read for class it's no wonder I feel a little overwhelmed with my studies. Alas....I shall overcome my reading slump blues and truck on through.

What I found interesting in Monday's class was the group exercise on how to promote nutrition or physical activity to seniors or teens. Each group had a lot of interesting and different approaches to getting their target audience involved. I realized that a lot of the same channels can be used to promote messages to both high and low level participants of a potential program. As a health communicator, you've really got to be creative and think "outside the box" to grab your audience's attention. I think that's a huge challenge in trying to promote health programs. There are so many great community programs for the public, but too often they go unheard or underutilized because it's being directed to the wrong population, lack of promotion, not enough money, culture and language barriers, and/or insufficient funds to spread the word about health programs. How can we possibley fill in these gaps to make health programs successful? Guess the answer lies within us and how "we" can think "outside the box" to work together and fill in the missing pieces.