Thoughts about the end of class....

Health communication is EVERYWHERE. This class really brought that into light. Before this class, I was always very bored when the classic health commercials came on TV (i.e. the cholesterol lowering or diet commercials), now I pay attention to not only these messages but also the not so obvious health messages. It may annoy my fellow TV watchers because now I am constantly yelling out “Health Message!!!!” during TV programs. It is like I am more tuned into what I am being exposed to and I don’t see that going away anytime soon. Working on the Family PACT project made all that we have learned in class more concrete. It gave me a chance to apply the tools we learned and I think by doing that I will be less likely to forget them. Unlike writing a paper this project allowed us to have the hands on experience that is health communication. It was (is) a lot of work but I think that every moment has been worth it. I have learned so much not only from the project but from my wonderful group mates. Although group work is hard at times, working in this group has really showed me how important it is to be around other people to get the creative juices flowing and that is so necessary if our health messages want to have even the slightest chance in the huge world of communication. ;

Nearing its end

So the semester is coming to an end....I really plan on reflecting on all I have learned in this class on my blog so I have a way to refresh my memory after the class is over. I simply don't have time to it right now.

Here is a You Tube clip I found when working on our final project. I think it is very well done...

Health Games

So, last week we talked about health games and the strength of them when dealing with health interventions. Speaking from personal experience I know they worked. In Peace Corps, we were responsible for creating a health fair. I was teamed up with another volunteer and we had to do the booth on Malaria. We had arragned to get about 100 mosquito nets donated so we wanted to give those out but we wanted the people attending the fair to work to get them. So, we had them play a version of the cake walk to get the nets. We had music playing and when we would stop it the person standing on the picture of the mosquito would answer a quetion (of course with assistance they would always get it right) and then we would give the net. It was hillarious because the Timorese had never seen something like it before and they just loved it. In addition, we had set up a coloring table underneath a net for kids to color educational pictures. My fellow volunteers all used games at their booths also and the entire event was a total sucess. Just that experience with games and health really showed me how powerful they can be.
I was just searching for games on the internet and there are a ton of health related webbased games. There really is something for everyone and I just need to get more internet savy to make sure I am not missing out anything good!

Idol Gives Back, do you

I was flipping through the channels last night and just happened to stop on American Idol and it was there special, Idol Gives Back show. Every single one of the stories they told asking for donations and for ‘us’ to make a change were health related. Yes, I think American Idol is a joke but talk about a good channel for getting the word out there about health disparities in this world. They had a ton of well recognized celebrities talking about and visiting malaria stricken villages and AIDS orphans in Africa and poor parts in New York were nobody has health insurance. They even had the Prime Minister of England on donating 20 million mosquito nets worth $200 million (I wonder if the nets will be used properly or if they will be used as fishing nets instead? I am a little hesitant to just give out nets because I have seen how just giving them may not be the best solution). I see this show as a form of media advocacy because although they were soliciting donations they were also raising awareness amongst people who may not otherwise pay attention to these health issues. Is this wrong-reason health promotion? I don’t think so, I see it as one of the only ways to teach millions of people who would not otherwise pay attention about health issues that are affecting our world. Yes, I do remain skeptical about where the money actually goes and because of that I did not donate but none the less I feel Idol Gives Back was a great way to get important health messages out to the masses.

PETA

Ah, it has been a while since I have posted. I have been swamped with midterms and the project for this class. Which I must say is coming along quite well. It helps that i have an amazing group and a topic that I am very interested in.
So in class this past week we took a look through the newspaper and counted the number of articles/ads broadly related to health. It was pretty remarkable at the quantity that we cam up with. So there isn't a lack of information out there, it is just the quality of the information that I am concerned about and getting people attention.

One radio spot that got my attention was the vice president of PETA on NPR. He was very well spoken and really drove home a lot of what we are learning in this class. One stood out the most to me was when caller criticized PETA for using Pamela Anderson as a spokesperson. She said she has been Vegan for 6 years and vegetarian for 20 and lost a little respect for PETA when she saw the ad. The vice-president responded politely by saying that she is not their target audience because she already shares the values of PETA. He then continued by describing their audience as being the Frat boys that don't care at all about animal welfare. That brought up a very good point, how far can you go to alienate someone who already believes to capture the attention of those who do not? He also talked about why they use celebrities (naked celebrities at that). His answer was that people don't want to hear about animal cruelty but their interested is peaked when you have a naked person on TV or in an ad. He said they can't even get a spot on the news when only talking about animals and that their only hope to get airtime is to have risky/provocative/sometimes offensive ads. This brings back the topic of wrong reason health-promotion. PETA often uses the wrong reason because people won't pay attention otherwise. I do agree that some of PETAs ads are hard to watch/look at but that is their point. They definitly go for shock value and fear appeal. Here is the link with the MP3. If you have 20 minutes I would listen to it, it is worth it and brings up some very important and intersting points. http://www.kpbs.org/radio/these_days;id=11222

Is Shrek Obese?!?!

How far do you go to get people to pay attention? Where to you draw the line when using sex, looks, and money to get someone to change a bad health behavior to a good health behavior? It is so hard to say. There are so many ads out there and health messages aren’t necessarily the funniest so I don’t blame the creators for getting creative! However, I don’t think the health messages should contradict what they are advertising.


I thought it was a little odd that Shreck was promoting childhood obesity prevention (isn't he kind of tubby?!?!)
It won't let me put the video directly in so just go to the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-zEDbl04NY

Then there was a link for this video…



and this video


Talk about contradictory!

Airborne!!!!

So time has been short this week because so my blog got put on the back burner. It is mid term time again, and I have just come to the conclusion that I am not very good at juggling everything that needs to be done. Oh well, at least this semester my tests are spread apart and not all in one week like last semester. So because I have been spread so thin I have been drinking my fare share of Airborne. I figure it is a good way to get my vitamins and get hydrated. Well, I was talking to my mom and she informed me that there was a class action lawsuit against Airborne because before November 2007 they had falsely advertised that Airborne can ‘cure or prevent the common cold.’ I guess people took that literally and got upset that a bunch of vitamins can’t really do that so they sued and a bunch of lawyers are reaping the benefits. And anyone else can benefit from it to because you can claim that you bought up to six bottle of Airborne with out showing proof and get reimbursed up to 10.50 per bottle! So that is $63 for nothing, now will your morals let you do it? Check out the website if you want more information. http://www.airbornehealthsettlement.com/

I guess they didn't do their formative research and test how people interpreted that wording well enough before they put the product on the market, ooppss....