Friday, 7 December 2018

Humankind’s coat of varied requirements

The goal of a health communication intervention programme is to engender behaviour change in a population by informing and educating people about a health problem of concern which enables them to act appropriately protecting themselves and accessing health care services when the need arises.

According to literature, health intervention programmes have moved from being predominantly centred at health facilities to the meaningful involvement of communities which have become the focus of health programmes today. To be able to put together effective prevention messages for behaviour change, we need to assess the mindset of our audiences. Various factors shape the mindset of people and only through proper engagement and dialogue can one understand how to effectively reach them. Mindsets are simply a set of beliefs or a way of thinking that determines an individual’s behaviour and outlook.

A girl in her late teens came to the city from her country home to help her aunt who was delivered of a baby with house chores. She could hardly understand or speak English and communicated with her aunt in the local dialect.

She frequently ran errands for her aunt to the market and supermarkets to buy provisions and food items. She was very hardworking and also excited to be living in the city. Her intention to quickly key into the “city life” made her quite open to new friends. She knew nothing about unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, and HIV since people rarely talked about such things in the village where she came from. The prevention messages she saw on television were just like all other programmes she watched passively. She couldn’t read the messages on the billboards she came across on her way to the market, and did not make out any stories from the pictures. Her aunt did not have time to talk to her about such things as she was busy with her new baby.

Despite her limited education, she understood the intentions behind the money and other gift items she received from a young man at the supermarket she patronised frequently, and she thought he was caring. She understood the way she felt whenever she was at the supermarket with the young man. She was indeed excited that someone in the city was picking up interest despite her background. The way she felt gradually reached tipping point, and with little resistance, the young man took advantage of the girl right in the inner room of his supermarket. Since their brief moment of pleasure was opportunistic, and had to be done in a hurry, none of them bothered about using a condom. I leave the outcomes for you to discern. Think about the number of households with such young people in a thriving metropolitan city.

An individual’s behaviour can be influenced by broad factors including urban settings, rural settings, slum settings, religious beliefs, and cultural beliefs. One or a combination of these factors can positively or negatively influence the behaviour of an individual. For instance, an educated lady who grew up in an urban area and is a serious religious person may opt to undergo Female Genital Mutilation as a cultural requirement to enable her get married. 

Organisations should engage their target audiences in focused group discussions to find out the factors that influence the way they behave. This will further streamline our prevention messages to focus on specific populations with similar mindsets. The messages would only motivate people to take actions if the benefits are presented in a compelling or personally relevant way.

Engagement with target audiences can ensure feedback and reveal the most appropriate media channels to be used. Evidence has shown that conveying a prevention message in a sustained, consistent and frequent manner can make an individual comprehend and act. Evidence has also revealed that prevention messages can become redundant, hence the need to monitor the impact of messages among target audiences periodically. Simple dashboard indicators like “what do you think the message is saying?” and “how has the message helped you?” can immediately tell you a lot about the impact of a message on an individual.

The use of alternative media such as social marketing, traditional songs, dramas, and dissemination of information through village meetings and religious leaders can have significant effect on a population. We need to use alternative media as much as we do conventional media. We need to improve the simplicity, visual interpretation, and quality of prevention messages in order to promote behaviour change.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, the family still remains the most important target audience. Parents need to saturate their children with survival education to equip them to act appropriately when the need arises. The rarity of saints is rife. Another complementary institution is formal education. Like a friend once said, “In school, we are taught to become doctors, teachers, lawyers and so on, but how many schools are teaching necessary survival skills? Our debt to society must be fully paid, for these clear and present dangers (HIV, TB, Hepatitis, Ebola, Unwanted pregnancies, Terrorism, etc) may linger for a while.