Health Communication and Program Planning
Core concepts
Understand the steps of program planning, including needs assessment, goal and objective setting, intervention design, implementation, and evaluation. Know the difference between process, impact, and outcome evaluation, and be able to write SMART objectives. Familiarity with health literacy, message framing, channels of communication, and cultural tailoring is expected. Understand logic models and the difference between formative and summative evaluation.
Traps
A common error is confusing impact with outcome evaluation: impact measures short-term changes such as knowledge or behavior, while outcome measures long-term changes such as morbidity or mortality. Another trap is writing objectives that are not measurable or lack a time frame. Questions may also test message framing: gain-framed messages emphasize benefits and often work well for prevention behaviors, while loss-framed messages emphasize risks and may work better for detection behaviors.
Worked example
"By the end of the six-week program, 70% of participants will correctly identify three sources of dietary sodium" is a SMART objective: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Study tip
Check every objective for a target population, a measurable indicator, and a deadline; missing any one usually makes it incorrect.