NYU Decreasing the Risk of Avoiding the use of Seatbelts while Driving among College Students Communication Campaign Strategy

You will put on the hat of the communication expert and devise a communication strategy that aims to achieve the strategic communication objectives of your proposed intervention.

Individual Project Assignment
Health Communication Campaign Plan
Communication Strategy
Deadline:
See syllabus.
Length:
No more than five (5) double-spaced pages of text (not including the title page, logic
model in the appendix, and bibliography).
Format:
The paper must be typewritten, double-spaced, with margins of 1 inch on all sides.
Use a Times New Roman 12-point font. Your name and Student ID number should
appear at the top left corner of each page (you can use the page header for this). All
pages should be appropriately numbered. Use headings and sub-headings as
appropriate. Cite your sources in-text and list them in the bibliography following
APA Style (6th edition) guidelines. All papers must comply with the University’s
academic integrity standards.
Submission: Upload paper (MS Word or PDF document only) to Canvas by the
deadline noted above. Students will NOT be able to upload documents to Canvas
once the deadline has passed (so please plan ahead). In the event that you
experience a technical problem with uploading your paper, please contact the Canvas
24/7 Help Desk AND email a copy of the file to the instructor BEFORE
the deadline. Papers submitted late will have points deducted for each day late.
Failure to submit a completed paper within three (3) days of the deadline will result
in a grade of zero points for this paper.
Sources:
In addition to your own innovation and creativity, you are expected to use relevant
evidence in the health communication literature to support the rationale of your
communication strategy. Specifically, the paper should include a minimum of (5)
relevant peer-reviewed journal articles (these should be different from the articles
you previously referenced in your topic proposal and behavioral analysis papers). The
research sources (including online sources) are to be cited “in-text” in the body of
the paper and listed in the References section following APA Style guidelines-6th
edition. Refer to the suggested online and library resources below.
Grading:
Papers will be graded based on the Health Communication Campaign Plan Rubric,
which can be found in the online course. This paper counts toward 20% of the final
grade in this course.
Assignment Description
Thus far, for your first two papers you acted in the role of a behavior change expert to define and
analyze the health problem you intend to change through modifying the health behavior of your
target audience. Your behavioral analysis, in which you considered alternative intervention
approaches and then settled on a particular one, culminated in a set of clear strategic communication
objectives that you intend to achieve through your proposed intervention. These objectives identify
the specific cognitive elements (beliefs, perceptions, feelings, etc.) that are the most likely to support
(and sustain) the health behavior change you seek for your target audience. For this final assignment
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Health Communication Campaign Plan
you will put on the hat of the communication expert and devise a communication strategy that aims
to achieve the strategic communication objectives of your proposed intervention.
Communication Strategy
The communication strategy plan is the active ingredient of your proposed intervention. It
outlines the specific communication activities that are expected to accomplish your intervention’s
communication objectives. These activities may be of different types – a public communication
campaign, a public event or a conference, a training session, a social media site, etc. – but they share
in common the objective of reaching your target audience with a specific message. Each
communication activity is essentially composed of three elements: the message (what you want to
say and how you want to say it), the source (who will say it) and the channel (how you will reach
your target audience). For example, you may propose to launch a public communication campaign
that will run a series of televised public service announcements featuring a teen celebrity spokesman
to reach teens with the message that using sunscreen is beneficial to both their health and
appearance. Or you may develop a communication workshop for primary care physicians that will
teach them how best to communicate the same information to their teenage patients. In all cases,
your choice of communication activities and the basic elements of your communication model
(message, source and channel) should be informed by two key considerations:
1. Knowledge of your target audience – effective strategic communication is audience-centered.
That means that you should always consider the different elements of your plan from the
perspective of your audience – their biases and predispositions, their needs and aspirations, their
values and norms, their communication preferences, etc. – and not from your own perspective.
For example, knowing that teens are more concerned about their appearance than about the risk
of getting skin cancer later in life should lead you to focus your message strategy on the visible
skin damage caused by unfiltered sun exposure instead of emphasizing the potentially adverse
health outcomes of this type of exposure.
2. Your intervention rationale – your communication plan ought to “respect” (or be consistent
with) your underlying theory regarding how the desired behavior change will be accomplished.
For example, if your intervention rationale is predicated on the assumption that causing people
to believe in their own personal susceptibility to skin cancer will motivate them to engage in sunprotective behaviors, then a risk communication approach that utilizes fear appeals to get people
concerned about skin cancer is an example of a communication strategy that is very much
consistent with this intervention rationale. In contrast, suggesting the use of humor appeals to
increase people’s perceived susceptibility to skin cancer would appear very much inconsistent
with the same intervention rationale.
Researching Your Communication Strategy
While innovation and creativity can make important contributions to the success of your
communication strategy, research has consistently shown that evidence-based health communication
programs are the most effective in achieving their desired outcomes. For this reason, you are
strongly encouraged to develop your communication plan based on relevant research. At a very
basic level, you can find and use relevant evidence in the health communication literature to support
or justify specific decisions you make regarding the various components of your proposed strategic
communication plan. For example, citing studies which found that teenagers respond favorably to
the use of humor in health preventive messages may justify your plan to use humor-based appeals
with a teenage audience (providing that this type of appeals is also consistent with your overall
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Individual Project Assignment
Health Communication Campaign Plan
intervention rationale). See the Library and Online Resources section below for some suggestions
about finding relevant communication research.
Pulling It All Together: The Logic Model
A logic model is a table or diagram (as in the figure below) that describes the logically-related parts of
your proposed campaign, showing the links between program inputs, program activities, and
expected program outcomes. In other words, it is a road map of how your campaign is intended to
work, that logically connects inputs (what we do) to the outcomes (what we hope to get, or the goals
and objectives of the intervention). The logic model brings together your intervention rationale
(behavioral analysis paper) and communication strategy.
Suggested Organization of Your Paper
I.
Title of Project
II.
Strategic Communication Objectives
• Briefly (2-3 sentences) restate the overall goals and objectives of your intervention (i.e.,
which public health problem you are interested in addressing and what specific behavior
or behaviors you propose to influence in order to effectively address the problem; please
also remember to mention your target audience).
• Briefly (2-3 sentences) summarize your intervention rationale (i.e., what needs to change
and why).
• In bullet-point format, list the communication objectives of your proposed intervention
(IMPORTANT: make sure that the objectives you list are revised according to the
feedback you received on your behavioral analysis paper).
III.
Message Design
• Core Message – What is the most persuasive or most important thing you can say to
achieve your communication objectives? This should be a simple, unambiguous
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•
•
sentence. Also remember that a message has 3 parts: (a) the issue, (b) why should the
audience care about the issue and (c) what should the audience think, feel or do
regarding this issue (for example, “Skin cancer can kill you but there are simple things
you can do to protect yourself against skin cancer”).
Message Appeal – Will you communicate your core message using a rational or an
emotional appeal? If emotional appeal, what emotion will you try to evoke or instigate?
Message Format and Frame – Will you use a short message or a narrative-type message?
How will you frame or “package” the information contained in the message? (for
example, a narrative-type message that emphasizes potential gains to one’s health and
appearance from using sunscreen as recommended can be an effective message strategy
of skin cancer prevention).
IV.
Source/Messenger
• Who (person, group or organization) is likely to draw attention to your message and/or
motivate members of your target audience to accept your behavioral recommendation?
• What characteristics of this source will likely cause your target audience to perceive this
person, group or organization as credible and/or likeable? Would you use different
sources with different sub-audiences?
V.
Dissemination Channels
• Which communication channels will you utilize to reach your target audience with your
message? (Note: channel is the way in which the message is sent, i.e., face-to-face,
television, email, etc.).
• What specific dissemination vehicles will you use? (Note: vehicle is the specific
communication tool used to deliver the message through the channel, for example, a
public service announcement, a documentary, a presentation, etc.)
VI.
Conclusion
• Reflect critically on the relative strengths and weaknesses of your communication
strategy – Is it feasible (i.e., easy to implement)? Is it cost-effective (that is, has the
potential to change the behavior of many in your target audience with minimal
investment of resources)? Is your target audience likely to respond favorably to your
communication strategy? Do you foresee potential barriers to the implementation of
your strategy? Is it possible that your communication strategy will have unintended
outcomes?
• If you had to come up with an alternative communication strategy (plan B of a sort),
what would be your general communication strategy?
VII.
Bibliography (APA style)
• List a minimum of 5 peer-reviewed journal articles that directly informed different
aspects of your proposed communication strategy.
• If applicable, list all other online sources you used and make sure that they are properly
cited in the relevant places in the text).
Appendix: Logic Model (include a diagram or table that describes your overall intervention plan)
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Library and Online Resources
•
The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Communication Strategy Statement
(https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ondcp/171694.pdf) is a good template of a communication
campaign strategy plan. A good resource for planning effective provider-patient interaction is
http://www.med.umich.edu/medstudents/curRes/cca/m4/docs/2009/Patient_Doctor_Comm
.pdf.
•
Academic Search Premier is the best library database to search for relevant work published in
the field of health communication. Much of this work is published in the two flagship journals
of the health communication field, Health Communication and Journal of Health
Communication , but relevant work is routinely published in other communication journals.
•
Two excellent online resources are CDC’s Gateway to Health Communication & Social
Marketing (http://www.cdc.gov/healthcommunication/) and CDCynergy (use the Health
Communication Web Version) (http://www.cdc.gov/healthcommunication/CDCynergy/).
Phases 3-4 in CDCynergy are useful for this particular assignment. Other more specific
resources you should consider using:
 Message review criteria (http://www.mdfilestorage.com/thcu/pubs/579818192.pdf)
 Channels and vehicles (http://www.mdfilestorage.com/thcu/pubs/243769731.pdf)
 Message framing (http://www.pharmacist.com/message-framing-it%E2%80%99s-howyou-say-it-matters)
•
For help with APA style formatting, please refer to the RU Library APA Style Research Guide
(http://libguides.rutgers.edu/learningapa).
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