CM1.6 | CM1.6 | Health Promotion, IEC and BCC — Summary & Reflection

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Health promotion (Ottawa Charter, 1986) is the process of enabling people to increase control over their health, operating through five action areas (healthy public policy, supportive environments, community action, personal skills, reorienting health services) and three strategies (advocate, enable, mediate). It is broader than health education, which is one tool within it aimed at KAP (knowledge, attitudes, practice) change using individual, group, and mass methods. IEC (Information, Education and Communication) is the systematic use of communication to disseminate health information and promote behaviour; BCC (Behaviour Change Communication) addresses the deeper determinants of behaviour — self-efficacy, social norms, perceived barriers — through formative research, audience segmentation, and theory-based design (Health Belief Model, Transtheoretical Model/Stages of Change, Social Cognitive Theory). Effective health communication campaigns follow a systematic design process: problem analysis → formative research → audience segmentation → message development and pretesting → channel selection → implementation → evaluation. Evaluation uses process, output, outcome (KAP surveys), and impact frameworks. Every clinical encounter is a health communication opportunity — the teach-back technique converts information-giving into confirmed understanding.

REFLECT

Think of a health behaviour that you have personally tried to change (exercise, diet, sleep) or witnessed a family member struggle to change (smoking cessation, medication adherence, weight loss). Using the Transtheoretical Model, identify which stage that person was in at the time, and — in retrospect — what communication or support strategy would have been appropriate for that stage. Now consider: as a doctor, what would you say differently to a patient at precontemplation about tobacco use vs one at preparation? How does the stage-matching concept change the way you think about health education in the clinic?