Communication
What you must know
Communication is the design and delivery of health messages and the channels that carry them. Start with the audience, not the message: segment, research, and pretest.
Know health literacy: the capacity to obtain, process, and understand health information to make decisions. Use plain language, short sentences, active voice, chunking, and visuals, and use teach-back ('tell me in your own words how you will take this') as the gold-standard check on understanding. Numeracy - absolute versus relative risk - is a frequent gap.
Know social marketing's four Ps: product (the benefit offered), price (costs: money, time, effort, stigma), place (where the audience can act), and promotion (channels and messages).
Know tailoring versus targeting: targeting customizes for a group segment; tailoring customizes for an individual using personal data. Know gain-framed messages (benefits of acting, often better for prevention) versus loss-framed messages (costs of not acting, often better for detection and screening).
Know channel selection: interpersonal channels are credible and strong for complex or sensitive topics but costly; mass media reach many at low cost per person but are weak for behavior change; digital and social channels allow segmentation but carry misinformation risk. Know diffusion of innovations (innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards) for spreading practice.
Traps: defaulting to leaflets when the audience needs dialogue; assuming readability equals comprehension; skipping pretesting; confusing tailoring with targeting.
Rule of thumb: If the audience must remember one thing, say one thing. Pretest with members of the priority population before the message ships.
Worked example: A clinic wants more colorectal screenings. Loss-framed messaging plus mailed FIT kits (place) and a nurse follow-up call (interpersonal channel) outperforms a general awareness poster.