Healthcom: Lessons Learned

Lesson One: Health Communication works

Lesson Two: It doesn't work by itself - people need opportunity to perform the new behaviour, environment must be supportive, services and products must be accessible

Lesson three: It does more than create demand - important positive side-effects eg: measles immunisation programme boosts immunisation coverage for other diseases

Lesson four: It works differently for different interventions - some health issue are inherently more difficult than others and therefore demand different approaches

Lesson five: It may not work as dramatically as public health experts expect - often unrealistically high expectations for communication strategies

Lesson six: Interpersonal channels are important - eg: in Swaziland, clinic staff and outreach workers were more effective channels in increasing knowledge and use of ORT than radio

Lesson seven: But so are the mass media - also for Swaziland, health staff reached 22% of the population, outreach workers 16% and radio 60%, therefore radio more effective overall

Lesson eight: It needs to be sustained - [after-all] Coca-cola keeps on spending [on advertising]

Lesson nine: It must be multi-disciplinary - health communication requires collaboration across disciplines

Lesson ten: It is difficult to institutionalise in developing countries